Beautiful Decay

There is a really interesting exhibit, (actually, several interesting exhibits) involving movie film, at the George Eastman Museum.  For the first 50 years or so, the movie film base was made of nitrocellulose, which is the same chemistry involved in gunpowder!  The problem with this film is that because it is organic, it can decompose in storage, with sometime terrible effects.  In 1978 there was a fire at a storage facility at the museum, and a vault containing the original negatives of 327 early feature films, short subjects and cartoons was destroyed.   There is a slower way that this material decomposes in storage, and as part of the exhibit, they showed a number of clips of two frames from each film, showing the beautiful decay at work.  It feels as if each of these could be enlarge and hung on a wall as abstract art.