Fox Talbot – Lost Arc Prints

We start almost chronologicaly. Salted paper is the begining of photographic printing.

Henry Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawings

In it’s origin we cannot forget about Henry Fox Talbot that used this process in his photogenic drawings. So let’s take a stroll into the past, shall we?

Fox-Talbot is said to have begun his research into light sensitive paper because of his inability to draw, even with the help of a camera lucida and camera obscura.

“How charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper.”
“And why should it not be possible?”
Henry Fox-Talbot

In January 1834, Talbot was home at about eighty-five miles west of London. He began to experiment with the idea and soon found that a sheet of fine writing paper, coated with salt and brushed with a solution of silver nitrate, darkened in the sun, and that a second coating of salt impeded further darkening or fading. Talbot used this discovery to make precise tracings of botanical specimens: he set a pressed leaf or plant on a piece of sensitized paper, covered it with a sheet of glass, and set it in the sun. Wherever the light struck, the paper darkened, but wherever the plant blocked the light, it remained white. He called his new discovery “the art of photogenic drawing.”

As his chemistry improved, Talbot returned to his original idea of photographic images made in a camera. During the “brilliant summer of 1835,” he took full advantage of the unusually abundant sunshine and placed pieces of silver iodided drawing paper in miniature cameras— “mouse traps,” his wife called them—set around the grounds to record the silhouette of Lacock Abbey’s animated roofline and trees.

(If you like history I strongly advise reading Malcom Daniel’s version, read it on the MetMuseum website linked below, written in October 2004, I fell in love with the story there, and it is quite a short version)

My photogenic drawing

The paper used int his process was thick enough to sustain the chemicals but not very white, for one very important reason: Usually paper who are truly white have whiteners like ammonia who will interfere with the chemicals used, ruining your master piece.

Image 1 – Our spot, on the right there are the chemicals used an the two recipients (the bottom one to warm up the water and the top one with the salted solution) and also a color test for a salt print (the brown image on top of the table); on the left we had our tenter to dry out the salted papers.

The first fase of the process was literally, salting. So we added 8gr of gelatine slowly and while agitating it into 1000 ml of destiled water. And let it rest for 10-15 minutes so it swallows. Meanwhile preparing 20 mg of Amonia Clorite (wich will give a darker brown tone to the final image but will also accelerate the exposure time, making it faster) and 10g of Sodium Citrate (Sodium=salt).

After the gellow is ready and dissolved, we had the Amonia Clorite and Sodium Citrate so they can impregnate the gellow and put the whole container in a warm water bath. Don’t ever try to speed this up by directly warming this in fire, itt will warm up to fast, ruin the gelatine that should be keept between 35-45º C. The gellow should be liquid at this point, so you can use it on your paper.

Putting the paper inside the gellow is also not so easy as you might think.

First: We have to know what side will have the salt after it’s dry so we mark it.

Second: the paper has to float and we can’t have bubbles in the right side or solution on the wrong one.

So, this is how we did it: Folded two corners of the paper in a specific way (to mark it and make it easier to grab) and put it in the water, first the middle and then the edges, to drag any bubbles in the gellow surface to the corners. Slowly of course, and just getting one of the sides wet.

Image 2 – This is me trying not to screw up my paper while salting it.

Then we dried the papers avoiding putting it in contact with anything else, so we don’t screw the gelatine surface. Turned the paper around once while drying to have a uniformed surface and then speed up the drying with a hair dryer.

The second part of the process will transform the salted surface ultraviolet light sensitive. So we had to do this part in a dark lab under yellow light and no humidity (because this last one will grab to the paper and gellow and ruin the image, giving it a look as if you litteraly dropped water on top of it).

We used a non metal (non metal=wood) pencil so it wouldn’t react with the silver (wich is also a metal). And spread Silver Nitrate at 12% concentration (between 1,5-2ml is a generous amount) around the paper carefully and in an homogenic way. We let it dry again and again, used hair dryer to give it a final blow.

Image 3 – This is Hugo carefully putting the silver on his paper under low yellow light conditions

Once you are sure it is completely dry put it in between foam, glass and hold it with binders, just like a lumen and just add the negative to the sandwich (with the printed/inked/darker part facing the emulsion on the paper) and we exposed it during 20 minutes in a light box with ultraviolet light.

Image 5 – My sandwich of paper, foam and negative, ready to go in the oven.

And Voilá! You have an image. Now, don’t let it fade away.

We go back to the lab and put it in the respective chemicals:

Tap Water (to wash off the excessive silver nitrate that is not needed nor exposed, during 10 minutes and changing the water regularly and not running it on top of the image, it is very sensitive);
Fixer (to finish what water started in a permanent way, removing the silver cristals that were not exposed to light from the paper, this way, the white will remain white, because in that area there will be no more cristals, just paper. Do it for about 4 minutes) + 2/3g of Sodium Carbonate to stabilize the pH;
Tap water again (to wash off the fixator);
Sodium Sulfite (to make sure there is no fixator left, for about 5 minutes);
And just a final wash with tap water for 30 minutes and switching water every 5 minutes.

And now your image is not going anywhere.

So, I’m impatient, right? I managed to screw up my salted paper print. Apparently I didn’t press the negative well enough against the paper, so it seems out of focus, or diluted. And you can see the difference in my image, the first one, a test the teacher used as an exemple in class and mine next to it. Shame on me. Still, it was fun and I enjoyed the picture I choose in this specific process, it has that old, very vintage look. I’ll just have to embrace the blurr. Despite this, I did achieve the contrast I wanted and I like my brushmarks around the image, so it was a shame to ruin it.

Also, embraced the brown stains in my hands that wouldn’t come of for days, because I touched the chemicals without putting gloves on. Don’t be like me, use nitrile disposable gloves when you touch chemicals.

Image 6 – My go on the salted paper, with the reffered blurr.

Image 7 – The teachers half go on the saltedpaper (Half because the image wasn’t fixated, or properly washed, as it was supposed to be an example, so you see some lost color but have a defined image, unlike mine).

References

Malcolm, D. (2004, October). William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) and the Invention of Photography. Researched in November 5th, 2019 in: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tlbt/hd_tlbt.htm

Harvard University. (s.d.). Salt Prints at Harvard.
Researched in November 3rd, 2019 in: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/saltprintsatharvard/photogenic-drawing

Rice, C. (2019, July). Historical Processes: The Salted Paper Print. Researched in November 3rd, 2019 in: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/features/historical-processes-the-salted-paper-print

(The shortest verison I was able to create)

So we started this shcool unit with it’s logical birth, history.

But alow me to begin with a conclusion: Photography doesn’t have just one story but serveral that converged, although their starting point had it’s origin in mutiple country with distinct influences.

“But someone has to have been the first, someone had to beat someone else to it”. Well, oppinions diverge on this matter. But let’s all agree that photography needs 3 things, and only these 3 to exist:

Light
Object
Photosensitive material

So, since that light and objects exist since the dawn of time. We can say that photography started by him who created photosensitive material to print on, thus recording what we see has it is, and not the first camera holder has you would think.

This is why the history of photograpy always shifted between assuming the documental value of images, as a way to just record reality and the way in wich diferente ages put their artistic toe into it, throughout the experience of creating something.

Having said this, there were countless experimental attempts to find photosensitive materials to produce what were originally called “photogenic drawings” meaning drawing created by light. These attempts pre-dated the existance of cameras and pretty much worked by: coating commonly available materials such as glass, metal, paper and even leather with light-sensitive chemicals.

The first chemically photographic process can be considered a photogram.

Important names in the history of printing

Johann Heinrich Schulze (1687-1744) – German physicist and professor of anatomy and medicin, found that silver nitrate in a jar, when left exposed to sunlight, turned dark on the side facing the window. After exposure, if the bottle was shaken, fresh silver nitrate replaced the exposed material near the glass surface. Schultze first demonstrated that this action was caused by light and not by heat. Schultze’s experiment failed to result in a permanent image because exposure to light continued to change the unfixed silver.

Thomas Wedgewood (1771-1805) – Chemist, physicist and son of the potter and industrialist, Josiah Wedgewood. By experimenting with chemicals in his father’s shop was able to produce only temporary images. He is known to have produced designs on leather, glass and ceramic items. Wedgewood called these images “sun prints” a term that has survived until today. His work also failed to produce permanent images due to his inability to fix the image.

Leaf -
It is believed to have been photographed by Wedgewood for several reasons, one of them the W letter on the right upper corner of the image. Although it is a controversial matter, it is one of the first photograms in history. — Salted paper photogram of a leaf, circa 1839.
A speculative attribution to Wedgwood in 2008 was later retired. Although this is a controversial matter, it is one of the first photograms in history.

“No attempts have been made to prevent the uncolored parts of the copy or profile from being acted upon by light have yet been successful”
Thomas Wedgewood

“The copying of a painting, or the profile, immediately after being taken, must be kept in an obscure place. It may indeed be examined in the shade, but, in this case, the exposure should be only for a few minutes, by the action of candles or lamps, as commonly employed it is not sensibly affected.”
Humphrey Davy

Joseph Nicephere Niepce, in France, in 1824 created a recorded image of a drawing by coating a sheet with Bitumen of Judea, a type of asphalt. By exposing through the drawing, and washing off the soft unexposed asphalt resulted in a photogram copy of the drawing. Niepce continued to explore ways to improve his process without significant success. He abandoned the concept and experiments and later worked with Louis Jaques Mande Deguerre on the Daguerreotype process.

Joseph Niepce – *Point de vue du Gras*, 1826/1827
The photography took 8 hours of exposure to sunlight.

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) – English scientist and mathematician, while traveling in Italy in the early 1830’s used a camera lucida (a portable camera obscura) to draw nature and because of the difficulties in detailing various subjects, he decided to investigate the use of photography as a way to capture the details.

Talbot began investigating the properties of silver salts in mid-1834 and in 1835 and part of the process was to expose to sunlight until an image appeared, followed by washing the print in salt solution under low level of light, resulting in a relatively permanent image.

Talbot used the term Calotype from the Greek “calos” meaning beautiful” to describe these images. Talbot was the first person to expose sensitized paper in a camera. Since film was unknown at the time, Talbot oiled the paper to make it transparent and this “negative” was used to produce a positive by contact printing through the oiled paper. Talbot is considered the first person to create a photographic process that produced a negative that could be converted into a positive image.

William Fox Talbot – An oak tree in winter, 1842-1843

He was also the first to manage to fix his photograms, in the salted paper, so his photogram images were the first to survive to this day.

We also owe a great deal to Anna Atkins (1799-1871). Anna, was born in Kent and spent her childhood in the presence of many of the leading English chemists. She helped her father in scientific endeavors. Also, Herschel and Talbot were friends of Anna’s father and thus Anna knew early on about the cyanotype and Talbot processes for creating images. Anna later used the process of making cyanotypes to produce detailed images of botanical specimens, he then used these to illustrate her book entitled “British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions”. This was the first book that was illustrated using photography.

Anna Atkins – Cyanotype: Dictyola Dicholoma, 1843.
Printed and published Part I of “British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions” in 1843 and in doing so established photography as an accurate medium for scientific illustration.

She learnedn cyanotype and photogenic drawings cooresponding with Fox Talbot and John Herschel. Herschel was a scientist, inventor and astronomer. He invented the cyanotype in 1842 by observing the photosensitivity of ferric salts. He also discovered that sodium thiosulfate would “fix” images and essentially stop images from fading with further exposure to light. The cyanotype became an important and popular method for producing images during the 19th and 20th centuries because of the ease of coating the paper with photosensitive solution and because the image can be developed using water.

The cyanotype process is very permanent and many of the photograms produced in the mid-1800s survive today.

As the method was perfected throughout time, it started to be used has a mein of art. In this fase i should like to give some final, but special attention to one who was one of the biggest influences in one of my all times favourite photographer.

Man Ray (1890-1976) – This american was one of the founders of the Dada movement (anti-art, ilogical and absurd), alogside with Michael Duchamp. In 1921. In Paris he comes across surrealismo (wich had a strong influence on Freud psicoanalisis, has enphatised the role of the subconsciente in creative activities) and becomes influente in the movement. Man Ray developed lots of experimental works, in techniques such as: Sabatier efect, photograms, multiple exposures and original techniques in photosensitivity and photographic prints.

The process and evolution of photograms is fascinating and experimental, so is it’s own process. Despite the interest, more than everything, the history just made me very curious on how to actually make a photogram or a sun print. Because, the concept seems rather simple, but the time that took for it to develop must require some skills wich i do not, yet, have.

References

Godinho, Maria Margarida A.f. Medeiros M. (2016). Fotogramas : Ensaios sobre fotografia. 1st ed. Lisboa : Documenta, 2016. 224 p. Powered by Pure, Scopus & Elsevier Fingerprint Engine™ © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Tag: Fox Talbot

SALTED PAPER PRINTS

Henry Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawings

My photogenic drawing

References

HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL PRINTS

(The shortest verison I was able to create)

Important names in the history of printing

References