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Nitrate Negatives
Portraits surviving as cellulose nitrate negatives, the flexible film that replaced glass and then destroyed itself. Source archive and rights statement on every image.
81 portraits · free to download
Flexible cellulose nitrate film arrived commercially around 1889 and replaced heavy glass plates for much of the next half century. It is chemically unstable, decays into a sticky amber mass and is genuinely flammable, so archives have long copied nitrate originals onto safety film and often destroyed the originals afterward. Acetate safety film replaced it from the 1930s onward, though acetate has its own decay problems.
