A Peek at Some Glass Plate Negatives
Blog post by JMM archivist Lorie Rombro. You can read more posts by Lorie HERE.
In December 2018, a box of approximately 60 glass plate negatives was donated to the Museum. The negatives had been found by the donor after the death of a family member and dated to c.1910-1920. The images, most likely taken by David N. Bacharach, were of his family, wife Irene and children Ruth and N. Albert, and possibly of his younger children, David Jr., Carl W. and Robert, as well as the interior and exterior of their home.
I have already spoken of my fancy new scanner, which brings me great joy, and this was a wonderful chance to put it to use. In the past, we haven’t been able to scan any large format negatives and add the images to our digital collection and online catalog without sending them to an outside processer, so getting to process the images myself was exciting.
There are a lot of steps to safely digitizing the photos in this antique format. Each plate was slowly removed from the wax paper holder it had been stored in, then I carefully brushed off the dust on the side, taking great pains to not touch the image. Then I took note of the condition and amount of deterioration/flaking visible on each image. Finally, I gently placed each plate on the scanner and waited to see what the image actually looked like.
Although we are still researching the history of the images and hope to find more information, these blog posts give me the chance to share new donations to the collection with our readers! But if you do happen to have any information on David N. Bacharach and his family, please email me!
For more information on glass plate negatives, please click here!