FROM SILVER TO SILICON

My personal journey through (parts of) the History of Photography.

My personal (photographic) life is covering less than a quarter of the timespan of photography. Nevertheless I witnessed and took part in the most important transformations in it‘s history. This is a short and very personal journey through my photographic life...

A long and winding road...

   When in 1984 I did my MFA in Photography at the “Graphische“ in Vienna (which was founded in 1888, therefore being one of the oldest schools for photography worldwide) photography was in a climax. The technical development had reached a level which couldn‘t be exceled. At least we thought so - not realizing that the Eastman Company, better know as Kodak, was already working on a 1-megapixel-CCD-sensor for digital cameras, an item which would at the end completely change our (photographic) life. And will bring down the Eastman Company because they themselves didn‘t fully believe in digital photography.

   At the beginning of the 1980s the curriculum of photo colleges still contained things like retouching negatives. We made portraits with the 4x5 inch view camera, using big  tungsten light lamps for lightning. Being a student was also an financial matter. Films and paper was expensive, you always thought twice before making a print. Film speed was more or less limited to 27 DIN/400 ASA (anybody still knows ASA and DIN?). Everything above this was called push developing - and not very much appreciated by our teachers. We where mixing our own chemistry and spent whole days in the darkroom (which was especially nice in winter, when you didn‘t see any daylight during darkroom days). 

Bretagne. Early Morning. 

   

   We had our photographic “heroes“, Ansel Adams for those in landscape photography, Avedon for fashion, Mappelthorp and Herb Ritts where at the beginning of their careers,  Oliviero Toscani started his. controversial and much discussed advertising campaign for Benetton. Although photography was not seen by many people as “art“ (there was only one photo gallery in Vienna at this time) many of us where thinking about photography as art. And it was the high time of photojournalism too. After all pictures changed the public opinion on the Vietnam war (which let to the „embedded“ journalists in the Iraq war of 1991). There where magazines like Life and National Geography, like GEO and Stern each of us wanted to work for. Being invited to become a member of MAGNUM was the Holy Grail...

From my "Avalon" Portfolio

   At the beginning of my „career“ as an artist I did a lot of landscape photography which was quite a back braking undertaking. When I working on my „Avalon“ portfolio I was carrying about 25 kg of equipment for three weeks through the Highlands of Scotland. One needed at least a medium format camera (I for sure couldn‘t afford a 8x10 inch view camera at this time), a heavy tripod, a box full of filters (all shades of yellow to dark red, as Ansel Adams was teaching us). After that you spent hours, days, weeks in the darkroom, breathing in the healthy fumes, fighting with gradation, dotting and burning. And yes, I enjoyed this time. Very much so.

Just the basics. Add filters, heavy tripod, light meter...

   Then some curious thing called „digital photography“ emerged. I was trying to ignore it, avoid it. But at some moment one of my clients wanted to have the pictures not only as slides or prints but also as digital files. I survived thanks to scanning the negatives and saving them on a Photo CD. But when they needed the pictures from a conference in Vienna within two hours after the event took place at their headquarter in Brussels, well, that was the point in time when I had to do the step into the world of digital photography.

Lanzarote. A "hyprid" so to say. Negative scanned, printed on inkjet printer...

If you buy a piano you own a piano. If you by a camera you are photographer... 

Was it worth? Well, it is photography too. I am not missing this endless hours in the darkroom. With digital photography you have at the end much more possibilities (or, at least, can achieve the results much easier and faster). Yes, it was worth it. Even if it is nowadays much more complicated to be recognised as a „real“ photographer. 

Picts, or it doesn‘t happen. 

Digital photography has „democratized“ photography (and more or less destroyed the professional photographers business). Everybody (who owns a cellphone) is making pictures today. Every day in 2014 an average of 1.8 billion photos were uploaded to the internet, a total of 657 billions. Every two minutes humans take more photos than ever existed in the total 150 years ago (and that are only this which are uploaded, pictures which a on some SD-cards or other hard disc are not included). 

The only problem I can see with this flood of pictures: The important ones, the really good ones, these which matter, are not so easy to find. And a lot of pictures are lost because its so easy to delete them. In the times before digital photography no (serious) photographer ever destroyed his negatives or slides. Nowadays you just push the right button to get rid of them if you think the are not worth keeping. In this connection I very much like the story of Dirk Halstead who did a photo which became a cover of Time magazine and won him many awards (not because of the quality but because of the uniqueness): During Bill Clinton‘s 1996 presidential campaign, Halstead was at an fundraiser event a few days before the election, shooting photos right up until the end. Several months after the fundraiser, the news broke that Clinton had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Searching his archive he came up with this particular photo which ended on the Time cover. He was shooting with a 35mm film SLR. His colleagues where shooting on digital - and deleted near identical images from their memory cards right after the event. 

My advice (maybe a little bit „old-school“): Never delete a picture. You never know if you might not need it some times in the future...

For me it was a long journey from the beginning of my photographic life until now. A journey which I enjoyed more often than not. A journey which is for sure not over yet...

FROM DAGUERROTYPE TO GICLÉE

A (incomplete) history of photographic processes.

   Browsing catalogs (may it be from an auction, exhibition or collections) you will find in the picture‘s description a lot of informations. Some of them are quite clear like the name of the photographer, the year the picture was taken, the title etc. Some are not so obvious like the description of the used photographic process...

An example from an online auction catalog (13th Westlicht Photographica Auction, Nov. 2015)

   As you can see on above sample it says „Vintage Silver print“. Now this actually is an intermixture of two different definition: „Silver print“ is the photographic process involved while „Vintage print“ has nothing to do with it.

What is a „Vintage Print“?

A vintage print is made during the artist‘s lifetime, by the artist or under his/her close supervision. A vintage print is usually priced higher than other print types because it can be seen as the original. 

What is a „Modern Print“?

Usually a print made long time after the artist has made the negative and without his/her supervision. In order for them to have value, they must be printed by someone who knew the photographer personally and had a sound knowledge of how he or she wanted his photographs to look.

   So now to the photographic processes. As there where so many different processes especially in the pioneer era of photography (when almost every photographer invented his own process) I will mention here only the most important ones, those you will encounter very often.

Daguerrotype (1839)

The daguerreotype, invented by Louis-Jagues-Mandè Daguerre and introduced in 1839, was the first publicly announced photographic process, and for nearly twenty years, it was the one most commonly used. By 1860, new processes which were less expensive and produced more easily viewed images had almost completely replaced it. The whole process was quite complicated involving a silver-plated copper sheet, long exposure times and a lot of chemical treatment (eg with mercury vapor). As  there is no negative to make prints from a daguerrotype is always an unique copy (which could only be duplicated by copying it with a camera).

Ambrotype

or amphitype, introduced in the 1850s, also known as a collodion positive,  is a positive photograph on glass. Like a print on paper, it is viewed by reflected light. Like the daguerrotype, each is a unique original that could only be duplicated by using a camera to copy it.

Calotype (1841) 

or talbotype is an early process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, a Scottish scientist, inventor and photography pioneer, using paper coated with silver iodide. The calotype process produced a translucent original negative image from which multiple positives could be made by simple contact printing.

  In the final decades of the 19th century the negative process was further developed. 1851 Scott Archer invented the wet plate (or collodion) process, using glass plates as carrier for the light sensitive silver emulsion, 1879 the first dry plate factory was founded, celluloid was introduced as carrier agent, which was replaced in the 1950s with acetate. In 1881 Gorge Eastman founded Kodak („You press the button, we do the rest“), and it was the Kodak Company, which presented in 1989 the first megapixel sensor for digital cameras. But all of this is important for the negative process only.  For the final print one needed the positive process, and over the time a lot of different processes where developed. Here are the most commonly used, the one you most likely will find around auctions (and some of them are still used by contemporary artists).

Salt print

The salt print, created by Henry Fox Talbot, was the dominant paper-based photographic process for producing positive prints during the period from 1839 through approximately 1860. 

Albumen print

also called albumen silver print, was published in January 1847 and was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photograph on a paper base from a negative It used the albumen found in egg whites in to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper and became the dominant form of photographic positives from 1855 to the turn of the 20th century, with a peak in the 1860-90 period.

Platinum print, Palladium print

Platinum prints, also called platinotypes, are photographic prints made by a  monochrome printing process that provides a large tonal range. The palladiotype is a less-common variant of the platinotype. The process came into greater use after World War I because the platinum used in the more-common platinotype quickly became too expensive, so photographers tried to replace the platinum with the much cheaper palladium which gave similar effects. 

Silver Print

or gelatin silver process is the photographic process used with currently  (still) available black-and-white films and printing papers. A suspension of silver salts in gelatine is coated onto a support such as  flexible plastic or film, baryta paper, or resin-coated paper. These light-sensitive materials are stable under normal keeping conditions and are able to be exposed and processed even many years after their manufacture.  Gelatin silver printing was the dominant photographic process from introduction in the 1880s until the 1960s when it was eclipsed by consumer color photography. The gelatin silver or black-and-white print is thus a primary form of visual documentation in the 20th century. Its widespread use in applications as wide-ranging as fine art, snap shots, and document reproduction led to an extraordinary variety of papers with a wide range of available surface texture and gloss, and paper thickness.

Parmelian print

An oddity in the history of print processes, which is nothing else but a silver print. The story behind: In 1927, not long after he decided to become a professional photographer, Ansel Adams published a portfolio of 18 silver gelatin photographic prints (in an edition of 100 copies, plus 10 artist's copies) named „Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras“. The term "parmelian" was a meaningless word invented by Jean Moore (the publisher), who believed that calling them "photographic prints" would not allow them to be taken seriously as art. Adams later said "I am not proud at allowing this breach of faith in my medium." 

Chromogenic color prints (Analogue C-Prints)

are full-color photographic prints made using chromogenic materials and processes. These prints may be produced from an original which is a color negative, slide or digital image. The chromogenic print process was nearly synonymous with the 20th-century color snapshot

Lambda prints (Digital C-Prints)

A system that uses lasers to expose light-sensitive material to produce a latent image that is then developed using conventional silver-based photographic chemicals. 

Cibachrome

is a dye destruction positive-to-positive photographic process used for the reproduction of slides on photographic paper. Since it uses 13 layers of azo dyes sealed in a polyester base, the print will not fade, discolor, or deteriorate for an extended time.

Nowadays, in the age of digital printing, there is no convention anymore for the naming of the used process. You can find merely different designations like Inkjet Print, Pigment Print, Archival Pigment Print, Pigment Ink Print or Giclée Print. All of them are printed on inkjet printers, also giclée has become synonymous with fine art reproductions printed a high-end inkjet printer and pigmented inks.

There are much more photographic processes and i listed here only the most commen one. If you find something not listed here - I will tryto solve it for you.

Filed under [Collector's Basics]