• home
  • home
  • contact
  • permissions
  • search

• biographies
  • main bios
  • aust-pictorialists

• collections
  • exhibitions
  • frank hurley
  • wesley stacey

• publication
  • books
  • roamings

• articles
  • research
  • jottings

• resources
  • links
  • search

• asia-pacific
  • the-collection
  • search

---

contents

Plate sizes

whole plate 16.5 x 2 1. 5cm
half-plate 10.5 x 16.5cm
quarter-plate 8.3 x 10.5cm

mammoth plate variable above whole plate

---

Abbreviations

ANG	Australian National Gallery, Canberra (changed to National Gallery of Australia in 1988)
ACP	Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
A. P.-R.	Australasian Photo-Review, formerly Photographic Review of Reviews, Sydney: Baker and Rouse, later KODAK (Australia) PTY. LTD. 1884-1956
A.P.J.	Australian Photographic Journal, Sydney: Harringtons Pty. Ltd.
H.P.J.	Harringtons Photographic journal, Sydney
M.E.A.	The Mechanical Eye in Australia: Photography 1841-1900 Alan Davies and Peter Stansbury with assistance from Con Tanre, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985
b.	born
d.	died
p.	page
pl.	plate
vol.	volume
w.	working

---

Photographic Terminology

---

Albumen silver paper

Paper coated with albumen (egg white) emulsion, sensitised prior to exposure by floating on silver nitrate. Albumen paper could be matt but usually had a definite gloss, and could be burnished. It could be gold toned to produce a permanent print, rich sepia through to purple in colour. Early matt albumen papers can often be confused with plain salted paper, as in William Blackwood's Australian Scenery album c. 1858. The earliest albumen papers were hand coated by the photographer but by 1858 they were available as a commercial article. They were the most common form of print between c.1857-1895 and were originally introduced by L.D. Blanquart-Evrard in 1850. Australian examples date from 1855.

---

Ambrotype

Also called collodiotypes or collodion positives. A direct positive process. A standard collodion wet plate negative on glass, or one specially developed or chemically treated was bound with a black background. The image would appear to be positive, and was free of the mirror reflections of the daguerreotype. The system was published in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer and Peter Wickens. Ambrotypes were first recorded as being used in Australia in 1854 and were most popular from 1855 when a number of studios introduced them. They were gradually displaced by paper prints from collodion negatives, and were rarely advertised after c.1865.

Ambrotypes were mounted in cases like daguerreotypes, with which they are often confused. They were much cheaper being on glass plates and more convenient as the faster emulsion of a wet plate permitted shorter exposures.

---

Autotype

Brand name for carbon prints produced by the Autotype Printing and Publishing Company, London, est. 1868.
see Carbon printing

---

Autochrome

An early colour transparency on glass developed in 1907 in France and introduced to Australia later that year.
see also Appendix

---

Blue print see Cyanotype

---

Bromide print see Gelatin silver

---

Bromoil process

A development of the oil process, much favoured by Pictorial movement photographers. The process was introduced by C. Welbourne Piper on a suggestion made by E.J. Wall in 1907, A standard gelatin silver print was bleached, with potassium bichromate which simultaneously hardened the gelatin in direct proportion to the density of the image.

When the bleached print was soaked in water for about 30 minutes at 30'C, the gelatin would swell and either accept or reject the oily ink applied with special bromoil brushes in direct proportion to the density of the print.

Bromoil was exclusively used by Pictorialists. It provided a rich, matt pigment surface like an etching, and enabled the photographer to control both the tonal range and eliminate unwanted detail. It was a difficult process, and only the best art photographers mastered it. Vaudry Robinson was one of the few to succeed with the natural-colour bromoils, involving repeated wettings and numerous brushes.

The bromoil process was introduced to Australia in 19 10, and was most popular in Australia from the 1920s to the 1940s. It fell from favour with the decline of the Pictorialist movement in the 1940s.

---

Calotype

Also called talbotype. A negative-positive print process on paper devised by W.H. Fox Talbot in 1840, a development of his earlier photogenic drawing process. Earlier paper negative systems required an exposure of more than half an hour, but Talbot discovered that an invisible latent image could be developed chemically to bring out a negative image with adequate density after an exposure of a minute or so. William Hetzer was the first professional to introduce the process in Australia in 1850. The wet collodion process was recognised as founded, in principle, on the talbotype, but was so vastly improved as to represent a new departure rather than a refinement. In 1853 Talbot ceased efforts to maintain his calotype patents in the face of the superior process using glass negatives.

---

Camera lucida

An optical drawing aid invented by William Hyde Wollaston in 1807. Consisted of an adjustable prism to make an image of a distant scene appear to be superimposed on a sheet of paper on which the artist would trace the virtual image. It was also used for copying work but required some draughting skill to use. Australian examples are rare. James Wallis used the device for topographical views in 1815.

---

Camera obscura

A drawing aid or entertainment, using a small hole or lens to throw an image onto a flat surface such as a wall or sheet of translucent paper which could be traced over. Portable instruments were developed in the eighteenth century and in this form it was the forerunner of modern cameras. Box camera obscuras were often modified for use in early photography. Large public entertainment camera obscuras were built in Australia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

---

Carbon process

Also known as autotypes. A non-silver pigment process based on the discovery, made by W.H. Fox Talbot in 1852, that gelatin mixed with potassium dichromate becomes insoluble after exposure to light. Paper coated with coloured dichromated gelatin could be contact printed with a negative, and when the gelatin surface was washed with warm water, the unexposed parts would dissolve away, leaving a relief image. The papers were produced commercially in a range of rich colours including blue, red, brown, green, orange and black.

Early carbon prints had poor tonal range, but these problems were overcome by new developments in the late 1860s. In Australia, John Degotardi produced fine prints in the 1870s by his 'patent permanent process' i.e. carbon. By the 1880s, carbon printing was relatively popular and remained so until the general advent of enlarging. Pictorialists, especially John Kauffmann, used the process in the 1930s, and it was also used for book illustration.

---

Carbro process

A modification of the carbon process. In 1873, A. Marion showed that the dichromated gelatin images on paper could affect the solubility of carbon tissues brought into contact with them.

Later, at the turn of the century, it was found that standard gelatin silver print could be contacted with a clichromated gelatin 'carbon tissue', and that the tissue would be rendered insoluble in direct proportion to the density of silver bromide in contact with it. Thus, carbon tissues could be printed from silver gelatin prints produced from the negative by enlargement. The carbro process was therefore not limited to the size of the negative, as was carbon printing. However, such prints are commonly called carbon and colour prints could also be produced by assembling carbon prints in the three colours in register.

---

Daguerreotype

Process invented by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in 1837, full details of which were not published until August 1839, A highly polished silver-coated copper plate was first exposed to iodine fumes, then exposed to light in a camera, forming a latent (invisible) image. The plate could be developed to a positive image by exposure to mercury vapour in a special developing box. A unique positive picture was produced, but it was difficult to view owing to the reflective property of the silver plate. For the protection of the easily abraded silver-mercury amalgam image, the daguerreotype plate was invariably mounted in a protective case of leather, wood, embossed paper or cardboard with a glass overlay. The first photographer known to have used the process in Australia was Captain Lucas in 1841.

Activity peaked around 1857 and then dropped sharply being superseded by the cheaper and more convenient collodion process. By the mid 1860s few studios advertised daguerreotypes.

---

Developing-out process

Process of using printing papers which were exposed to form only a latent image, which was brought out by development. The term was used to distinguish these from printing-out papers, which produced an image at the time of exposure, and only required fixing. In general, developing-out papers required far less exposure than printing-out papers, so that the developing-out system was better suited to the demands of enlarging. Nearly all modern papers are developingout papers.

Printing-out papers have a longer tonal range than modern papers, as the darker areas which develop first then mask those areas as the highlights slowly reach saturation. They were well suited to making prints from the very contrasty negatives of the nineteenth century, Modern developing-out papers demand the use of negatives with far less contrast.

---

Direct positive processes

Any photographic process which produces the final positive image directly, without a negative stage. Included in this category are daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, chromatypes, tintypes, pannotypes. All modern transparency processes involving reversal development including most Polaroid processes are direct positives.

---

Dry plate

Also known as the gelatin bromide negative. A term commonly used to describe the gelatin silver emulsion negatives produced after 1879. Some gelatin silver bromide emulsions were offered to the public by Richard Kennett as early as 1874, but the new dry plates didn't reach Australia until about 1879. Many Australian photographers claimed to be the first to use the new gelatin dry plates around this time, but the first photographer known to have produced these plates locally was Phillip Marchant in Adelaide during the early 1880s. The dry plate was rapidly adopted by the local photographic industry, and had displaced the wet plate by about 1885. It did away with the need for a darkroom tent and sensitising baths, greatly increasing the mobility of photography.

Requiring shorter exposures, the dry plate could manage some action and gave better detail in the highlights and shadows.

The term also refers to collodion dry plates.

---

Dye transfer

Three separate gelatin negatives photographed on sheets dyed in cyan, magenta and yellow using filters, are contact printed in registration onto a sensitive paper to form a rich colour photograph not subject to fading. Used by some art photographers in the 1980s.

See also Appendix

---

Enlarging

Before 1880, enlargements were usually made by copying an existing photograph onto a camera of a larger plate size. The resulting new negative was then contact printed using sunlight in the normal manner.

The existence of large Australian portraits painted in oil and pastel with a very 'photographic' look (e.g. by painterphotographers such as Edward Dalton in the late I850s) indicates that some means of enlarging images was then in use. Very large copy cameras or some form of solar or daylight enlarger was probably used for these works.

Solar enlargers were marketed from the I860s and used by professional studios until the advent of silver gelatin papers in the 1880s.

The earliest solar enlargers had the negative placed in front of an opal glass, illuminated from behind by sunlight. The image of the illuminated negative could be thrown onto a sheet of sensitised paper in a darkened enclosure. Exposures would have been quite long due to the slow speed of printing-out papers. Such a system would also emphasise the aberrations of the lens used for enlarging.

Enlarged photographs, a feature of exhibitions in the 1870s, were produced by direct solar enlargement or copying. Autotype (carbon) also offered a method of enlarging prints for display or painting over. Richard Daintree used this method before 1876 to have very large exhibition prints made of his Australian views, which were subsequently heavily coloured in oil paints.

After the advent of fast silver gelatin papers enlarging was widely adopted by professional studios. Methods of producing enlarged photographs sometimes onto sensitised canvas were also advertised from the late 1880s through to the 1890s.

---

Ferrotype see Tintype

---

Gelatin emulsion

Photographic emulsion first applied by Richard Leach Maddox in 1871. It did not become the predominant photographic emulsion until the 1880s, when its ability to retain photographic sensitivity in a dry state was fully appreciated. Gelatin has until recently remained the most general emulsion base for negative and positive films and papers.
It was essential to the development of the gelatin negative (see Dry plate. See also Photomechanical printing. For gelatin paper see gelatin silver print)

---

Gelatin silver

Standard black and white photograph of the twentieth century. Printing paper with a gelatin silver bromide emulsion, usually producing a 'cold' black image. The surface can be glossy or matt and the paper is very sensitive by comparison with earlier printing-out papers, One advantage was that only short exposures were needed and prints could be made by enlargement.

Gelatin silver paper is usually exposed by projection in an enlarger and the image is brought out by chemical development, hence the term developing-out paper. The first bromide papers were offered commercially bv the Liverpool Dry Plate Company as early as 1873 but it was not until the late 1880s that they were commonly used, appealing first to professionals as they were cheaper and easily enlarged and printed. Matt bromide papers were popular with professional and amateurs in Australia from the early 1890s. Glossy silver gelatin prints called Rococo or Nikko date from 1893 and can be confused with gloss albumen, but lack the same detail and tonality. Gelatin silver papers became fairly general after 1910.

---

Gum print

Printing process popular with Pictorial school photographers at the turn of the century due to its rich surface and the possibility for manipulating the image to give broader graphic effects. An emulsion of gum arabic containing dichromate, which became soluble in proportion to its exposure to light. After exposure under the negative, the gum-dichromate emulsion, bearing a pigment, could be developed to form a relief image in warm water. The process was devised by John Pouncy in 1838, but did not become popular until the 1890s. Victor Artigue was an early exponent of gum printing around 1889, using a modified form of development by abrasion: using warm water laden with sawdust to remove the light-exposed soluble gum.

---

Halftone processes

The search for a permanent (i.e. non fading or corroding) photornechanical means of reproduction both for original photographs and other artwork or illustration continued through a number of processes, usually involving the collographic family of organic substances and gelatin.

Photographic book illustration publication was initially limited to photographic prints laboriously pasted into blank pages provided in the text. Later, other reprographic processes such as woodburytype, collotype and so forth were used for reproduction. But all of these processes either involved a loss of grey scale, the individual mounting of each print into the text, or the use of delicate printing plates making all but the shortest print runs impracticable.

---

Instantaneous photography

During the 1850s, most photographs demanded exposures of five to twenty minutes, or even hours, so that views of busy streets or candid scenes would be depopulated on the final print. A few photographers specialised in techniques which could speed up exposures by the use of fast lenses and sensitive emulsion additives, reducingthe exposure to a tenth of a second or less. In comparison with the exposures then current, this represented virtuallv 'instantaneous' exposure. Much of the surviving early instantaneous photography was taken on a stereo format, as the small negative size allowed relatively fast lenses to be used.

---

Megalethoscope

Form of table viewer for photographs devised by Carlo Ponti in Italy in 1862, Large photographic prints in wooden frame mountings could be viewed by reflected or transmitted light in this viewer, through a large magnifying glass. Many of the views would appear to change from day to night illumination according to the viewing arrangement,

William Blackwood made some of his Sydney views into day-or-night scenes, for viewing in a megalethoscope, c. 1858.

---

Melainotype see Tintype

---

Orthochromatic plate

Early black and white plates and films were only sensitive to blue and green light, the red end of the spectrum being rendered as black tones and skies as featureless white areas. see Tintype

---

Paget plate

An early colour transparency on glass. see Appendix

---

Panchromatic plate

Emulsion sensitive to most colours of the spectrum, including red, giving a good rendition of natural colour/tone relations but in a grey-black tone sacle. see Appendix

---

Photogenic drawing

Process devised by W.H. Fox Talbot in 1834 for making photographic shadow prints of opaque objects. Writing paper dipped in silver chloride or silver iodide was placed in the sun under an arrangement of leaves, flowers, feathers or other opaque objects to receive a permanent impression of their shadows. The process of fixing these photogenic drawings was discovered by Talbot in stages. Rough fixation was first achieved by washing the photogenic drawings with weak solutions of potassium iodide, but permanent fixation wasn't really effective until Sir John Herschel suggested the use of hypo (sodium thiosulphate) in January 1839.

Photogenic drawings were also made bv Talbot in cameras of his own design, or using the solar microscope (a form of optical microscope capable of projecting an image on a small screen). The resulting negative images on paper (now called photograms) could be printed in contact with another sheet of sensitised paper to produce positives.
Photogenic drawings were fundamentally the same as salted paper prints, and pre-date Talbot's discovery of the latent image in September 1840. Salted paper images produced by the chemical development of the latent image were often distinguished from the earlier photogenic drawings by the use of the term calotype.

---

Photogravure

Photornechanical reproduction method based on the photographic etching of a metal printing plate. The earliest experiments in this line were undertaken by W.H. Fox Talbot in 1852, who used a dichromated gelatin emulsion as an acidresist surface on a metal intaglio printing plate. Talbot also pioneered the use of a cross-line screen through which he exposed his printing plates. By 1858 he had abandoned the cross-line screen in favour of a random aquatint grain of dusted gum copal powder on the photoengraved plate - a technique which he called photoglyphic engraving.

Finally, in 1879, Karl Klic devised the modern technique of photogravure by dusting the metal plate with resin, then melting the resin with heat to produce the aquatint grain. Klic then used a dichromated 'carbon tissue' exposed under a transparency positive, and squeezed that tissue on contact with the dusted copper intaglio plate. The carbon tissue acted as a resist surface for subsequent ferric chloride etching of the intaglio plate. The carbon tissue formed a coating of variable thickness over the copper plate, and would admit etching solution to the copper surface in inverse proportion to its own thickness. The result was an ink printing plate with random grain, capable of producing much finer detail than the modern halftone process.

---

Photolithography

Process of photornechanical reproduction using photographically sensitised stone blocks, usually limestone. Alphonse Poitevin took out the first patent for photolithography in 1855. Poitevin used albumen sensitised with dichromate and coated over a lithographic stone. The dichromate was exposed under the negative, and after the dichromate-albumen emulsion was washed to remove its soluble component, the remaining albumen would resist the ink coated onto the stone. The ink remaining on the stone could reproduce the original scene by transfer to paper.

---

Pigment processes

From the commencement of photographic experimentation, two principles of photographic sensitivity were exploited. One used the dissociation of metallic salts to form particles of silver on exposure to light. The other used the property of organic substances such as asphaltum or gum arabic, which hardened or whose solubility changed on exposure to light. The printing industry uses the latter processes, while silver prints (or lead, platinum, chromium, iron or other metallic salts) are used in photography. The use of gelatin as a medium was a revolutionary improvement in both fields.

For further information on pigment processes see Autotype, Bromoil process, Carbon processes, Carbro, process, Collotype, Dye transfer, Gum print, Photogravure, Photolithography, Poitevin's process, Woodburytype.

---

Polaroid

Instant development process formed by internal dye diffusion.

---

Platinotype - platinum print

William Willis perfected a method of producing platinum-based photographic papers and emulsions in the mid 1870s, and by 1879 had formed a company to produce platinum printing papers.

Paper coated with potassium chloroplatinate and ferric oxalate is usually exposed under the negative by contact printing in sunlight. The light reduces the ferric salt to a ferrous salt, and the potassium oxalate developer dissolves these ferrous salts which in turn reduce the platinum salt to its metallic state. Dilute hydrochloric acid is used as a fixer to remove the unexposed ferric salt. The resulting print, usually possessing a warm black- tone, is very stable owing to the platinum metal being extremely inert. Properly manipulated, the platinum printing process could produce prints of fine, rich gradation.

---

Printing-out paper

Any photographic paper which is darkened by the action of light alone without the use of a subsequent developer or the use of the latent image principle. Most of the photographic paper produced prior to the introduction of gelatin silver paper was classified as printing-out paper. Includes salted paper, albumen paper, some chloride and chloro-bromide papers and platinotype.

Turn-of-the-century gelatin chloride printing-out paper, was commonly known as P.O.P.
Printing-out papers required far more exposure than developing-out papers, and thus generally had to be printed in contact printing frames in direct sunlight. Thev were therefore usually of the same size as the negative.

---

Salted paper print

Paper sensitised with silver in salt solution, without any surface emulsion. The earliest salted paper prints were produced by soaking absorbent paper in a solution of table salt, onto which a silver nitrate solution would be brushed, reacting to form light-sensitive silver chloride. Devised by Fox Talbot in the 1830s, this was used extensively until the introduction of albumen printing paper. Salted paper prints usually possess a sepia or lilac image (according to the fixer used) without any surface sheen. Related salted paper processes of a later date include platinotype and Vandyke printing. If produced from a paper negative, salted paper prints are referred to as talbotypes or calotypes. Albumen paper is also a salted paper process although not usually referred to as such.

---

Sennotype

Printing assemblage process, popular in Australia between 1863 and 1865, consisting of two albumen prints sandwiched together under glass, the top one waxed for transparency and often coloured. A novelty process introduced to Australia by Charles Wilson who, on arrival in 1862, claimed to be licensed to instruct others in Mr Serino's process. The effect of the print assemblage and fusion under the glass was to produce a greater range of tones, much blacker shadows and steady graduation of the mid-tones. The effect produced was often exaggerated in advertisements as producing a threedimensional effect.

---

Stereograph

Double photograph, taken with a camera with two lenses, separated to provide a parallax effect. When viewed through a stereo viewing device, the images appear to spring out into three-dimensional relief. The process was first demonstrated on daguerreotypes in Australia by Douglas Kilburn in Hobart in 1853, and was popular into the mid 1870s. The process then became less popular for a time but enjoyed a revival at the turn of the century,

---

Stereoscope

Viewer for stereo cards, stereo daguerreotypes or stereo transparencies. I'he three most common types of viewer were the Brewster viewer consisting of an enclosed wooden box with two lenses or prisms to present magnified images of the two images to each eye; the Mascher viewer, a folding case viewer similar to an ambrotype case but possessingtwo lenses to give the stereo effect; and most commonly - the wooden framework Holmes-Bates viewer, sometimes known as the Kilburn viewer.

---

Talbotype see Calotype

---

Tannin process see Collodion process (dry)

---

Tintype

Direct positive collodion image on blackjapanned tin. Emulsion is identical to the ambrotype but the black tin backing allowed these images to be made very cheaply, without the lavish case. Most tintypes are small and uninspiring, mostly mounted on cards or in special small albums.

---

Waxed paper process

Process identical to calotype except that the paper negative was impregnated with wax to render it more transparent, reducing the effect of the negative paper grain transferred to the salted paper print. The images were also of higher definition. Popular in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Some practitioners continued to use the process for its simplicity and portability into the late 1850s.

The visiting English photographer Frank Haes lectured on the process in Sydney in 1858 and made views using it.

---

Wet plate process see Collodion process (wet)

---

Woodburytype

A photomechanical reproduction process invented by Walter Bentley Woodbury. The process was complex, resulting in a pigment print but produced a fine result which could be indistinguishable from an original photograph but did not fade and could be mass-produced for book and journal illustration.

Woodburytypes were not made in Australia, although some publications about or by Australians were printed in England.

---

. >>contents