Faded photograph prints

I have inherited a puzzling problem. We have a hallway along one
wall of which a photo timeline runs. The hallway is lighted by
fluorescent tube lights in enclosed fixtures. It is an interior
hallway with no windows. The photos are color scans of primarily
black and white originals printed in color on glossy photo paper
from an ink jet printer. The prints are then dry mounted onto foam
core.

The photos appear to "randomly" fade at an alarming rate. We have
tried using different papers and different printers, but to no
avail, we have tried to isolate a correlation to lighting hotspots,
but none exist. Photos fade just as quickly in darker areas of the
hallway as in brighter ones. We have tried control groups of
multiple picture using the same print settings, printer, ink
cartridges, box of paper, and dry mounting materials and technique.
Nothing seems to work. Some pictures "randomly" do not fade at all
and others fade rapidly, sometimes right next to each other. Some of
the fading appears to "bleach out" the image, while other fade out
to a dirty greenish tint. Our last control group faded to the green
tint in less than two weeks.

Currently, we have stopped using an inkjet, and are printing our
photo scans with a color laser printer. We are also going to try wet
mounting the prints instead of dry mounting as well.

What's going on here? Are we missing something obvious? Will the
laser printer solve our problem?

Mark D. Hanson
Curator
Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum
1011 Pacesetter Drive
Rantoul IL 61866-3672
217-893-1613
Fax: 217-892-5774


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 18:34
                 Distributed: Tuesday, January 25, 2005
                       Message Id: cdl-18-34-012
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