Joseph G. Barabe

25+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

Joe served McCrone Associates for 24 years as a senior research microscopist and director of scientific imaging. He mentored under the tutelage of Dr. Walter C. McCrone where he learned the special skills necessary to examine and analyze the materials constituting historical and contemporary works of art, historical objects, and documents. His analytical duties included the analysis of art objects such as paintings and prints, ancient documents and historical and archeological artifacts using a variety of analytical tools including polarized light microscopy, SEM with x-ray spectrometry, infrared and Raman spectroscopy, and other analytical methods as appropriate. He has performed forensic document examinations including forged and altered documents; paper, ink and toner comparisons, writing sequence determinations, and printing process identification. His scientific imaging specialties include photomacrography, photomicrography and invisible radiation photography. Famous projects: analysis of the ink on the Gospel of Judas, the Archaic Mark forgery, the Voynich Manuscript analysis and the Zapruder film imaging project. Prior to joining McCrone, Joe was senior scientific photographer at the University of Chicago.