Historic Photographic Processes: A Guide to Creating Handmade Photographic Images

Description

A comprehensive user's guide to the photographic processes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While digital photography offers many exciting capabilities, nothing can replace the unique look and feel of hand-crafted images made with traditional techniques, applications, and equipment. In Historic Photographic Processes, fine-art photographer Richard Farber offers in-depth information on eight of the most enduring processes in photographic history, including salted paper, albumen, cyanotype, kallitype, platinum/palladium, carbon/carbro, gum bichromate, and bromoil. Drawing on extensive research, Farber provides practical, accessible instructions and resource lists for each of these methods. He guides the reader through each step, from selecting the appropriate paper and sensitizing it to exposing, developing, and toning the final print. Each method is accompanied by a short explanation of how it was originally used and its significance in the evolution of photography. Historic Photographic Processes contains more than fifty color and ten black-and-white images that beautifully illustrate each of the processes described. Chapters include an introduction to photographic techniques and applications, such as useful safelights, sizing paper, measuring solutions, exposure controls, ultraviolet light sources, and making enlarged negatives, as well as an extensive section on safety in- and outside of the darkroom. The appendix provides important information on the chemicals discussed, as well as health-and-safety references and supply sources.