The Muybridge portfolio was followed soon thereafter by the publication of 21 individual mammoth plate albumen prints printed directly from the original William Henry Jackson negatives in the Colorado Historical Society.

In 1978, CAW was asked to print a sales edition of 12 Eugène Atget negatives for sale through the Department of Photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

Other vintage media printing projects included individual prints by Francis Frith (albumen), Éduard Baldus (salted paper); approximately 100 exhibition prints for the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, exhibition series The Work of Atget (albumen); exhibition prints of the Meserve/Kunhardt Civil War cdv glass plates at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (albumen); a portfolio, Fred E. Miller: Photographer of the Crows (gelatin POP); prints for the limited edition publication of American Frontiers: The Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan, 1876-1874 (albumen); and a master set from the Jacob Riis glass plates at the Museum of the City of New York.

For some of these projects, we were allowed only limited access to the original glass plates. This fostered intense investigation into the making of accurate duplicate negatives: negatives that would print on a given medium as if they were the original glass or film.

A sample of our major duplicating projects includes:

By the early 1980s, the question of what to do with already deteriorated cellulose acetate negatives remained unanswered, and CAW was in a unique position to offer a solution. The problems associated with the recovery of emulsion layers from deteriorated acetate negatives did not have to do with removing the emulsion itself, rather, it was what to do next. The procedures tested up to then produced a free-floating emulsion layer that was grossly fragile and unstable. If it could be unfolded and aligned, it could only be re-adhered to glass.

Addressing these two drawbacks, CAW melded the acetate stripping procedures into its already accurate and highly calibrated negative duplicating facility. By rigorously controlling the amount of water in the stripping routine, CAW eliminated the problems of fragility and dimensional stability. Furthermore, the new procedure allowed the recovered image pellicle to dry directly in an archival paper sling without adhering to it, and the duplicating procedure produced a preservation interpositive and an accurate working negative.

Below are a few of the larger projects involving the recovery of severely deteriorated acetate negatives:

By the year 2000, the digital tsunami had hit. Institutions were dismantling their wet labs and replacing them with digital studios and print labs. The negative preservation doctrine of "duplicate and freeze" was giving way to "digitize and freeze."

Through our film recorders, we make archive quality duplicate and copy negatives.
Through our digital printers, we make museum quality fine art reproductions.
In our wet labs, we produce silver halide POP (salt, albumen, and gelatin) and DOP prints for exhibition.
In our acetate stripping labs, we recover and digitize deteriorated films of all sizes.

The Chicago Albumen Works remains committed to the values it brought to photograph preservation in the 1980s and 1990s. While working in a digital environment expands the services we can offer, it does not diminish the attention we pay to the photographic and fine art objects we work with, nor to the needs of the institutions and individuals that are our clients. Every phase of our history has had a role in informing how we approach the next challenge --and every challenge is an opportunity to bring our experience forward.