Antique Photo Processes

ANTIQUE PHOTOGRAPHS & HOW THEY WERE MADE

by Joelle Steele

There are many antique photographs that have survived the last century or so. These images give us a very personal glimpse into a world that is no more, and so they are real treasures. Photographs were made in a variety of ways with different chemicals and other materials, most of which are so fragile that they can be easily destroyed by improper handling. The following is a little mini-encyclopedia of some of the processes used to make these wonderful old images.

ALBUMEN PRINTS

These images are the most common type of photographs made in the 19th century. They are usually a sepia tint (a reddish-brown color) and can be either matte or semi-gloss finish. They were invented by Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor in 1848 and by Louis Desire Blanquart-Evrard in 1850. Albumen is egg white, and in Blanquart-Evrard’s method, it was mixed with salt and applied to paper which was then treated with silver nitrate, making it light-sensitive. The image was printed under a negative exposed to sunlight, and was then fixed, washed, and mounted. Saint-Victor’s method involved the coating of a glass plate with egg white and potassium iodide, which was then bathed in silver nitrate. His images afforded much greater detail, but the process was very slow, and therefore not suitable for portraiture. However, they found their place in capturing images of the landscapes and architecture of the time.

AMBROTYPES – see COLLODION POSITIVES

CABINET PHOTOGRAPHS

These photographs were larger versions of the very popular “cartes de visite.” They were photographs mounted on cards, a method first used in 1866. They were approximately 4.5” x 6.5” (11cm x 16.5 cm) and were being produced well into the 20th century, but they were most popular from 1880 to 1900, becoming more ornate in the 1890s.

CALOTYPES These photographs are also sometimes called salt prints or Talbotypes, for their inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot. In 1840, around the same time that the Daguerreotype was being invented, Talbot invented the calotype, a photograph on paper made from a paper negative. A sheet of ordinary paper was coated with silver nitrate, dried, dipped in potassium iodide, dried again, floated in a mixture of silver nitrate and gallic acid, fixed. This negative was then placed on a sheet of paper that had been immersed in salt water and then coated with silver nitrate. When exposed to light, the print was fixed, washed, and dried. The image was embedded in the fibers of the paper, and could be left “as is,” or glazed to give it a sheen. Calotypes were generally sepia tones (a reddish brown color). Calotypes were more common in England and never really caught on in the United States, but they were the first practical application of a negative-to-positive photographic method, and they allowed for the production of multiple copies of a single image. Unfortunately, however, the fuzzy calotype images failed to compete with the Daguerreotype’s fine details. But, it is Talbot’s process that was the forerunner of 20th century photography.
		Early Calotype

CARBON PRINTS

These photographs were first patented by Joseph Wilson Swan in 1864. They were clear prints with a wide range of tones. A tissue negative contained carbon and other pigments, mixed in a gelatin base made light-sensitive by immersion in potassium bichromate. The image on the tissue negative was washed, transferred to paper, and the tissue backing removed.

CARDS - MOUNTED

There were a variety of photographs mounted onto cards. They were mounted on card stock because the paper on which photographs were printed was so thin that it curled and was easily damaged through handling. Many mounted photo cards were never standardized in size. They include the very popular cartes de visite, cabinet cards, and stereotypes, as well as other lesser-known cards such as the boudoir, imperial, panel, panoramic, promenade, trilby, and Victoria. Trilby cards were probably the smallest at about 2” x 2.5” (5cm x 6.5cm), and the largest were probably the imperials at up to 10” (25.5cm).

CARTES DE VISITE

These are probably the best-known antique photographic images. They were invented in 1855 by Andre-Adolphe Eugene Disdere, and they enjoyed great popularity all the way through World War I. They had a more or less standard measurement of approximately 2.5” x 3.5” (6.5cm x 10.5cm), and the oldest versions were quite thin and plain. More ornate mounts with gilt edges and stamping on the front were characteristic of later versions. Most cartes de visite were imprinted with the photographer’s name, and most were portraits.

CASE MOUNTING

When images were made on glass or tin, they were usually sold mounted in cases to protect them from damage. These cases were made of leather over wood and cardboard. Then, in 1854, the “Union” case was introduced. It has been described as being made from “gutta percha,” a dark, hard, rubbery or leathery substance made from the latex (sap) of tropical trees, such as the Palaquium and Payenna species of the South Pacific islands and South America. But, they were really made from an early plastic, a thermoplastic resin produced by mixing shellac and wood fiber, which was then press-molded into various designs.

COLLODION PROCESS Also called the wet plate process, the collodion method was a negative process invented in the early 1850s by Frederick Scott Archer and Peter Fry as an alternative to the albumen method. It paved the way for high quality duplication of photographs. The collodion process required only a two- or three-second exposure time, so this was a definite plus. But, it was also necessary to keep a glass plate wet with collodion, and that meant that a photographer had to carry a lot of chemicals along with his glass plates. This could be quite dangerous, since collodion is a highly flammable and toxic chemical -- pyroxylin, a solution of nitrocellulose (“gun-cotton”) mixed with ether or acetone, sometimes with other alcohols as well. The negative process was accomplished using a clear piece of glass coated with a thin layer of iodized collodion dissolved in ether and alcohol and mixed with potassium iodide. The plate was then taken into the darkroom and dipped in a silver nitrate solution that made it light-sensitive. It was immediately placed in the camera and exposed. Afterwards, it was immediately fixed and could then be printed onto any material, usually onto albumen-treated paper.		1864 wet collodion photograph Photo of Abraham Lincoln by Matthew Brady

COLLODION POSITIVES These images are also called ambrotypes, and they are encased photographs consisting of glass negatives mounted on a black background to make them appear positive. They were made for only a short time, although they were still available in the 1880s. They were made by underexposing iodized collodion on a glass negative, dipping it in silver nitrate, and then exposing it while still wet. It was then bleached and mounted on black cloth (often velvet) in a case, or was painted black on the back of the glass. The images could be matte or glossy, and the whites were truly white, unlike the faded yellow look produced by the albumen process. Collodion positives were one-of-a-kind photographs, as were Daguerreotypes, which they resemble on the surface. While less reflective and therefore easier to view from any angle than were Daguerreotypes, the collodion positives lacked the detail of the Daguerreotypes, but they were faster and less expensive to produce, making them available to more people.		Ambrotype (Collodion Positive) Subject and photographer unidentified

CYANOTYPES

While this process was invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel, cyanotypes did not gain popularity until the late 1890s. The images were bright blue with a matte finish. Materials were made light-sensitive with iron salts rather than silver compounds. Cyanotypes were stable and today architectural blueprints are still made using this process.

DAGUERREOTYPES These encased photographic images were first pioneered in 1827 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. He went into partnership with Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in 1828 and died four years later. Daguerre continued to experiment with the process until he discovered a way to develop photographic plates in only 30 minutes and fix them in a salt bath. In 1839, he named these images “Daguerreotypes.” The plate had to be housed in an air-proof case in order to protect its fragile materials and prevent tarnishing, and it was necessary to hold it at just the right angle in order to view the image – one way to distinguish a Daguerreotype from other glass plate images. In its earliest form, the images had bluish-grey tones. In later years, a brown tone called “gilding” became more widely used. The Daguerreotype produced a very clear, sharp, and detailed image, owing to the use of a very fine lens. Daguerreotypes enjoyed only a short twenty years of popularity before being replaced by less expensive techniques, ones that additionally allowed for duplication of the image. It was, however, a number of years before anything of comparable image quality was produced. Daguerre’s was the first widely used photographic method, but it was not the forerunner of our modern photography. A Daguerreotype was created using a highly polished silver-plated sheet of metal, usually copper. The plate was made light-sensitive by coating it with iodine vapor/fumes and either chlorine or bromine vapors/fumes. It was exposed inside the camera and then developed using mercury vapor/fumes. The image was fixed with sodium thiosulfate and was then toned with gold chloride. Color could be applied to the metal. There were no mirrors in cameras at this time, so the image is always laterally-reversed. Daguerreotypes were relatively small, starting at about 1.45” x 1.65,” with the largest images being not more than about 6.5” x 8.5.”		Niépce's first glass plate image (1826) Daguerreotype Photo of Gilpin Bennett, photographer unidentified

DRY PLATE PROCESS

The dry collodion plate was first introduced in 1864, and its invention is generally attributed to Dr. Richard Norris. However, the plates were not made sufficiently light-sensitive until about 20 years later, at which time they became widely used. Dry plate techniques are classified according to the type of emulsion used to process them, usually albumen or gelatin.

FERROTYPES – see TINTYPES

FILM

There were different kinds of film produced, starting in the late 19th century with gelatin, which was discovered in the late 1860s. Gelatin film was first introduced in 1884, and roll film followed just five years later. But gelatin was delicate and was eventually replaced with celluloid, a colorless and highly flammable film made from nitrocellulose and camphor. It wasn’t until 1939 that “safety” film was created from a non-flammable plastic called cellulose acetate. That film is coated with a layer of light-sensitive silver halide salts bonded by gelatin, and it produces black and white negatives. With color film, dyes are added to the salts to make them sensitive to different colors.

GELATIN PRINTS

These are also called gelatin silver prints or simply silver prints. They were invented by Dr. Richard Maddox in 1871. He had found a way to use gelatin instead of glass for a photographic plate, which led to the development of the dry plate process. Gelatin prints are called silver prints because the light-sensitive compounds used were often either silver bromide or silver chloride, which were coated onto the paper in gelatin. The images are usually silver-grey or brown.

GEMTYPES – see TINTYPES

GLASS PLATE NEGATIVES – see COLLODION PROCESS

HYALOTYPE

These were positive images produced on glass plates. They were first invented in the 1850s but did not come into widespread use until 1875, at which time they were used in “Magic Lanterns,” which projected them onto a screen, making them the forerunners of 20th century photographic slides.

MELAINOTYPE – see TINTYPE

MOUNTING – see CARDS-MOUNTED

PAPER PRINTS

These are classified according to the type of emulsion coating the paper. They include calotypes, albumen prints, salted prints, carbon prints, platinum prints, and bromide prints.

PLATINUM PRINTS

These are very beautiful photographs with many grey tones ranging from silver to black. Brown tones can also be created with this process. The prints are finished with metallic platinum and are resistant to fading. They have a matte finish because the image is embedded in the paper’s fibers instead of coating the surface of the paper.

SALT PRINTS - see CALOTYPES

SEPIA PRINTS

Sepia prints or sepia tones get their name from a reddish-brown pigment that comes from the Sepia officinalis, or common cuttlefish. In the old photographic processes, sepia prints were created by immersing a print in potassium ferricyanide, washing it, and bathing it in toner, which converted the silver halide to silver sulphide and created the reddish-brown sepia coloration or tone. When a true sepia print fades, it turns pink.

SILVER PRINTS – see GELATIN PRINTS

STEREOTYPES These are images taken with a double-lens camera and then mounted side-by-side on a card. They were then placed in a viewer that created a 3-D effect. They are also called stereo cards and they were produced in very large quantities. The twin images look almost identical, but they are just slightly different. Stereotypes were popular from about the mid-1850s up until the 1920s and 1930s.		Stereotype San Francisco's Russian Hill

TALBOTYPE – see CALOTYPE

TINTYPES

These photographic images were also known in Europe (England in particular) as ferrotypes and melainotypes. The very smallest were sometimes called gemtypes. They were invented by Hamilton Smith, were first produced in 1856, and were popular up until about the early 1890s. They were most popular in the United States, and did not even become known until the late 1870s in Europe, where they were never more than a novelty. They are negative images, developed using the wet collodion process, on thin sheets of iron that have a thin black layer of varnish or enamel that makes the image appear as a positive. Like Daguerreotypes, the images are one-of-a-kind and cannot be duplicated, they are negatives so they are always laterally-reversed, and the earliest ones are usually encased. Tintypes range in size from approximately 1.45” x 1.65” (3.5cm x 4.2cm) to 6.5” x 8.5” (16.5cm x 21.5cm). The gemtypes were smaller.

UNION CASE – see CASE MOUNTING

WET PLATE – see COLLODION PROCESS

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