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I understand why photos based on organic dyes would fade (discussed previously). But photos based on metallic silver fade as well such as like the one shown below. As a metal (a fairly stable one at that) I would think silver should be resilient to fading but still old black and white photos do fade.

What causes old black and white photographs to fade?

enter image description here

Source: www.photo-restoration.co.uk

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  • $\begingroup$ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_paper#Black-and-white_prints $\endgroup$ – Zhe Apr 18 at 19:23
  • $\begingroup$ Consider all the parts.It is not just the silver. The silver is in a medium that is mounted to a backing. All the parts are vulnerable to various ravages like temperature, humidity, UV, chemical pollution, physical abrasion etc ... To understand why any one photo faded, you would need to know what it is made of and precisely what it was subjected to. $\endgroup$ – Luquettm Apr 18 at 20:38

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