Photographic drawing salted paper: part deux

"How charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durable and remain fixed upon the paper! And why should it not be possible? I asked myself."
-William Henry Fox Talbot

During this part of our wonderful photo process class, we focused on making contact prints on self-made paper. We stuck to 3 different kinds of coating: Arrowroot, gelatin, and albumen, to create our "old-timey" photographic prints.

The wizard of the photographic drawing, William Henry Fox Talbot's discovery came between 1834-35, when he made the world's first silver chloride photo paper, and a process that could keep images from suddenly disappearing after being exposed to light again. Talbot's "photogenic drawing" paper was made in two steps: 1, fine quality writing paper was dunked in a weak salt solution and dried. 2, the paper became light sensitive by brushing on a strong solution of silver nitrate. After sensitized, the paper could be contact-printed, turning very dark in the sunlight. The paper was then soaked in a strong salt water solution to remove the paper's sensitivity to light, although bright light would still ruin the print. Herschel suggested that Talbot change to sodium thiosulfate, or "hypo" as the fixing material,which was a glorious choice, because the prints would now be fixed for real, and gave them white highlights instead of the faded opaque look from before. So in 1839, "hypo" became the preferred method of fixation, and Talbot's "photogenic drawing" paper became known as "regular photo paper".



Talbot noticed that his prints looked different than those elsewhere, and found out that gelatin in his paper made his images more red and brown than the other guys. He used neutral citrate to make his prints brighter and more red, and also looked into changing the binder from salt. The resulting discovery was a paste of arrowroot, a starchy mixture instead of a salty one that gave better color and more detail to the image. In fact, once arrowroot was discovered, single-salt papers were obsolete.

The Albumen print was invented in 1850 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, and used the albumen found in egg whites to stick adhere silver to the paper. Eggs being so inexpensive, Albumen prints grew in popularity and were used world-wide for photographic purposes, and the shiny surface of the dried egg whites made the albumen print the right choice aesthetically out of the three.




In class, we experimented with 3 different types of silver-based photo paper, each made in lab under controlled settings.

The papers

Arrowroot coating:
4g arrowroot
119mL water
4g NaCl
.5g citric acid

To get the solution, an arrowroot paste was added to the NaCl and citric acid, and then ready for use.

Gelatin coating:
125mL water
1g gelatin
2.5g citric acid
2.5 g NaCl

The mixture was heated in a double boiler, and while warm, coated onto photorag paper.

Albumen coating:
500mL egg white
3mL vinegar
7.5g NaCl

The egg white was shaken (violently I may add) then let to sit in a container for two days. The coating process involved taking photo rag paper and floating paper on top of the surface of the albumen, avoiding bubbles of course, dried and re-coated.


After the paper coating ordeal (My group actually was kind enough to do it for me in my absence) I had 2 sheets of paper for each mix, the first with one coat and the second with two coats of each concoction. The albumen with two coats was shiny but the single-coated page was pretty flat.

Eat type of paper was exposed with the same process:
first, the dried albumen, gelatin, and arrowroot papers were coated with one coat of silver nitrate solution, dried, and then a second coat was applied and dried. In the end, I had a sheet of each paper with 1, 2, and 3 coats of silver ---- to make sure which worked best.

A 4x5 negative of a rose was placed on each paper individually, and they were exposed in direct sunlight for 5 minutes, washed, fixed, and washed again.




My best results were with albumen, with 2 coats of albumen and 3 coats of silver.




Good links on the subject:
http://albumen.conservation-us.org/library/monographs/reilly/chap3.html
http://steveanchell.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=34%3Asalted-paper&catid=15%3Aoutput-darkroom-and-lightroom&Itemid=39
http://chadjarvis.com/pdf/Reilly.pdf
http://books.google.com/books?id=k2gMwudsE3IC&pg=PA226&lpg=PA226&dq=19th+century+manuals+salted+paper&source=bl&ots=QFXXHcgbZC&sig=pQwH6pAjpWYhmqpBziCEeeUPdjQ&hl=en&ei=xGW3Tca5DYyltwe-qKzeBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEoQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=true