10 authors, executed in 10 different historical methods of photo printing, which make it possible, 100 years after its heyday, to see “what pictorialism is today”. Also at the end of March there will be a friendly meeting and a master class by Vadim Tolstov "Pictorial photography and alternative methods of photo printing".

Ambrotype. Wet Collodion Process

The process produces negative and positive images on glass. At the same time, very gentle mid-tones and the widest dynamic range are transmitted.

In 1846, American medical student John Parker Maynard dissolved nitrocellulose in a mixture of alcohol and ether. He received a syrupy transparent liquid, which, when dried, gave a persistent transparent film. Thus, he invented collodion. In medicine, it was used at one time as a plaster during military operations: at the same time it disinfected and closed the wound. There are known examples of its use during the Crimean War.

In 1847, Abel Niepce, the son of the great Niepce, the founder of photography, figured out to use glass instead of paper and apply a layer of albumin, an egg white that kept the silver halogens on it.

And finally, Frederick Scott Archer in 1851 combined all these inventions into one - the use of collodion on glass to obtain a photographic image.

Nowadays, about a hundred people around the world are involved in this process.

Alexey Alekseev

Cyanotype

One of the earliest photographic printing methods that produces prints with a cyan tint. This is the simplest and most inexpensive process, requiring only two inexpensive reagents. You can use paper or cloth as a backing. This process is interesting for both beginners and advanced photographers.

Cyanotype was invented by Sir John FW Herschel (1792-1871) astronomer and physicist. In 1842 he first published a description of Cyanotype in "On the Action of the Rays of the Solar Spectrum on Vegetable Colors, and on Some New Photographic Processes." Herschel was one of the founders of photography. It was he who pushed Talbot (William Henry Fox Talbot, 1800-1877), the creator of the first negative-positive process, to use sodium thiosulfate (now a well-known fixer) to convert unreacted silver halides into a water-soluble form (fix the image) and facilitate washing out of the image. The term "Photography" was also coined by Herschel. In the beginning, cyanotype was practically not used in photography. Herschel came up with this process for copying mathematical tables. Anna Atkins (Anna Atkins, 1799-1871), a British biologist, in 1843 published a book in a limited edition, which for the first time used photographs of plants (more precisely, photograms) made by cyanotype.

Several American companies even sold ready-made cyanotype papers during the period 1870-1930.

Temperament

In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting, many productive and time consuming photo printing processes. And almost the only one giving the opportunity to receive color prints. Temperament allows you to get an image of any shade, because the drawing is created gradually layer by layer. Several layers of the same color end up with one common layer, a number of which then form the final image.

Temperature emulsion is a light-sensitive mixture and, like any photographic emulsion, requires the absence of light in its preparation, but its sensitivity differs from that of ordinary photographic emulsion. The sun and bright daylight should be excluded. It consists of three main parts: an egg, a sensitizer (Ammonium dichromate) and a dye.

For a long time, eggs have been used to create pigment patterns. When creating photographs, they give a surface quality similar to the classic drawing.

Vadim Tolstov