Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Kinch" <pvx@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 6:30 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Carbon Pigment Longevity Confirmed!

> To broaden the scope, this time they included works on
> paper...including watercolors they admit can't be shown often because
> of fade issues. There was also a selection of photographs from the
> era-mostly salt prints and albumens, which have held up nicely, being
> silver based. But the killer image was a super-mammoth glass plate
> print of a mountain waterfall by Adolphe Braun (about 20" x 30"),
> circa 1870 or so. It had a tonal richness and depth that was vastly
> superior to anything else on the wall, and beyond most modern prints
> by any process. The wall label stated it was done with a carbon
> pigment process Braun had developed (but my history of photography
> texts indicate he acquired the French rights to the process, and by
> 1868 his firm was producing 1500 prints a day!).

French and Belgium rights to the Joseph Swann process. The last was a
versatile inventor who also had invented electrical lamps and photogravure.
The UK company Autotype is directly related to the companies that Swann
founded. There's a good summary of the activities of Adolphe Braun at
http://www.fotoplatz.stereographie.de/braun/braun.htm  (in German). At that
time the archival qualities of the process were already recognised. Not the
environmental qualities of the process though ;-)  The development and
production of the right papers for the process was one of Braun's
achievements. Not mentioned in the article but something I remember reading
in a book was a trick he used for his early flower photographs, the long
exposure needed at that time would make it impossible to photograph plants
and flowers so he put them in lime water for some hours before the picture
was made.

Ernst