UNDATED – Portrait of a maid standing at the window in a light-flooded living room. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Photo: Gorber Family Archive
The story behind the image
The other day I re-discovered a tiny set of images from about 1910. This undated image was taken in the living room of the family, and – as usual – very little additional context is given. No names, no locations, and not even dates.
When I first looked at the image I thought that it couldn’t be restored. Not only had the print faded almost completely over the past century (which is bad enough), but the content itself was challenging. Imagine a living room illuminated by strong sunlight streaming in from huge windows. The contrasts simply get too harsh. If you expose the window (and maid) correctly, the furniture will just dip into black. If you expose the room correctly, the window (and maid) will be vanish in the brightness. And this is what had happened here, in my opinion.
If you do not balance the light in the room and the light from the window, there is little chance of achieving a well-balanced photo. It was as simple as that in 1910, and it is still true today. Of course, we do have HDR and RAW and Photoshop, which ease the complexity a lot, but the principle challenge still remains today.
So I did my best to restore the image, and while not entirely happy with the resulting image, it is way better than the original print in its current status. Below is a 1:1 comparison of the color-calibrated scan and its digital twin, and – yes! – the original really looks like this today.
Finally, if you want to try recovering the photo by yourself, please feel free to download the original scan as a ZIP file. The only thing I did was reducing the size of the 16-bit TIFF image to 2964 x 4076 pixel to make handling easier. After all, this is still a 12.8 Megapixel image. Enjoy!
The high resolution image
| Capture Date | undated, c. 1910 |
| Image Source | Cabinet Photo, c. 11.5 x 16.6 cm black & white albumen print mounted to cardboard |
| Digital Image Source | EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo |
| Digital Image Source Format | TIFF, 48 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 5437 x 7831 Pixels |
| Copyright | © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Photo: Gorber Family Archive |
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