Moldy Ancestor Portraits

When mold reaches a ancestor portrait, the result is fuzzy grey or white patches, brown foxing spots and a musty smell that comes with the print. The cause is nearly always years in a humid attic, a cardboard box on a concrete floor or a plastic sleeve that trapped moisture, and ancestor portraits kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the moldy ancestor portrait as a repair job: it removes the mold and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the features, the period clothing and the studio props as photographed. Faces of a great-great-grandparent nobody alive ever met that were lost to the mold are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

For moldy ancestor portraits the order is mold first, faces second, upscale last, each step taking the previous result. Standard suits a ancestor portrait for a screen; Pro or Max gives a moldy print more detail for reprinting.