In 2021, the Special Collections accepted a donation of 35854 photographs of the late Canadian photographer Grant Collingwood. Approximately 31788 of those were various sized negatives, and only 4066 were photographic prints. Over the last five years, the Special Collections staff, Young Canada Works interns, and placement students of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management (F+PPCM) program have sequentially collaborated with one another by cataloging and re-housing the thousands of materials. Ultimately, passing the Collingwood baton off and leaving behind notes of advice to support the next project archivist.
Over time, not only have filled bankers boxes transformed into orderly archival document cases, but archivists have learned new skills: how to read cursive handwriting, how to infer decades by utilizing context clues in the photographs when no handwritten date is available, and various conservation methods to unstick film negatives. The advice left behind has come in especially handy, as in the Spring of 2026 I opened a bankers box to have it reveal stacks of approximately 570 gelatin silver prints, none of which were dated and all of which were stuck together from water damage. Throwing them out would be a disservice to Special Collections as it was 14% of the prints in the Collingwood collection. It would also be a disservice to researchers. Was it worth the risk of throwing them out and losing documents of research value? We decided that it was not.
The first attempt to unstick the gelatin silver prints was to use the humidity chamber materials that were left behind by the Summer 2025 F+PPCM placement student. She learned the conservation of unsticking damaged negatives. I followed her instructions, I used a clear storage box that was 7 inches deep, I placed a microfiber cloth at the bottom. I poured in hot water from the kettle to be absorbed by the cloth, and I placed a metal shelf organizer from Ikea and on top and left the gelatin silver prints to rest. I sealed the lid of the box and plastic wrapped the entire unit to ensure the humidity stayed inside of the chamber. Unfortunately, due to the severe damage done to the gelatin silver prints, the humidity was not successful in releasing them from one another the way it had for the negatives, they remained stuck and hard as a rock.
The Special Collections team used our photography backgrounds to decide on the next steps to take. With some additional research, we agreed that gelatin silver prints could be saved the same way in which they are made in the darkroom; by submerging them in water and laying them flat to dry. It felt risky to put archival documents into a wet bath, when liquid near any archival documents is often strictly forbidden. However, since the alternative was to just throw them away, we decided it was worth the risk. Before purchasing the additional supplies, we were fortunate to borrow equipment from the Technology Resource Centre (TRC) at the university as they have the supplies needed for the darkroom on campus. We borrowed a 16” x 20” developing tray, one set of print tongs, and a multi-purpose squeegee. We could not complete this without an acrylic sheet. Since the TRC did not have this available, we purchased an acrylic serving tray from our nearby dollar store. We also could not complete this without materials to suspend prints so that they did not stick to the table when drying, so we purchased a ‘fine screen roll’ from the nearby Canadian Tire used for common household windows.
I filled the development tray with warm water and submerged the gelatin silver prints. I monitored them to see if they would lift, and we were correct in our hypothesis as the water encouraged them to go from hard as a rock to silky and slippery and I was able to pull them apart with the print tongs. Separating them one by one, I walked them individually by holding the corners of the print like I would the train of a delicate wedding dress. I placed them on a window screen which fit about thirty prints and took anywhere from half a day to a full day for them to dry. In our newfound success, we returned the materials to the TRC and purchased our own supplies to have indefinitely.
Since the prints were stuck together in various piles, all of which were inconsistently numbered, I used the humidity chamber to keep the stack of prints moist when needed, as allowing them to fully dry out and re-wet would cause further damage. I was also careful to not have them be left wet over the weekend, as extended periods of dampness and humidity made the emulsion lift off and ruined the entire photograph. The wet-to-dried prints were not sticky, and it caused no issues to stack them on one another. Although many of the prints did curl up, by layering them between acid free folders that hugged the prints, using layered acid free boards, and various sized archival or gym weights sitting atop, we pressed them for a week and they flattened right down. At last, we stored them in individual archival safe plastic sleeves and prepped them to be catalogued.
As there were 570 prints to re-wet and pull apart, the project took four months to complete, starting in March and ending in June. The project was so successful that only a fair few prints did not make the cut and were thrown out in the process. However, as none of the prints have a date scrawled across the back of them, it will be a task passed off to the next project archivist to determine what decade they belong to for our arrangement which is chronological order by year and subdivided by subject matter. And just like that, the Collingwood baton is passed off to continue its project archivist relay race.
