>
> I know that if I had started my business later in the childproof chemical
> world that we are now building, B&S wouldn't have gotten started, and people
> today would be paying Mallinkrodt prices for platinum salts. The big guys
> are happy not to sell to the photographers buying in the pint sizes, their
> insurance companies are happy. The Big Ones refer the little buyers to us,
> they'd just as soon not bother, same as GM has not come to me to buy pt for
> their catalytic converters, though I'd be happy to talk to them.
>
Reading the above comment (and taking it out of context) got me musing
about the "good old days" of non-silver, how far things have come, and
how small cottage industries like B&S have changed the landscape.
In regard to platinum printing, I remember a good friend (whose books
helped to revitalize the interest in non-silver photography in the late
60's and 70's) talking about having to spend days in NY tracking down a
4 oz bottle of Mallinkrodt's potassium chloroplatinate (and bought the
last one on the supplier's shelves) with no hope of finding another.
I remember in the 70's trying to get ferric oxalate. The chemistry
departments of several major universities offered me "ferrous oxalate"
and wondered why I didn't want it. Finally, getting hold of a student
who knew another student at a different school who had a cousin,
who... etc. got some of Pfizer's industrial grade stuff. Of course, by
the time I got it, humidity had made it unusable.
Then, around 1977 I recall coming across a one person company named
Elegant Images that put all the stuff you needed together and took the
pain out of the process. It wasn't perfect. I remember a shipment
received during a summer heat spell that had completely ruined oxalate,
but at least there was a place to go for more. The point it that thanks
to small concerns like Bostick & Sullivan the materials and processes
for many previously "difficult" printing techniques are almost
commonplace. A few years ago my wife started platinium printing, not
because of any influence from me (she won't even use the zone system -
and to top it off, her first name is "Judy" :-) but because a very good
friend of hers, a lady in her 80's, had just become enthusiastic about
this terrific "new" process. In other words, it's not just for the hard
core anymore.
Similar things have happened to other processes. In the 70's it was
carbon and carbro, revitalized by Dr. Green in the US, and so on.
No great conclusions from this rambling other than gratitude to all
those whose interest and efforts have brought photography from the
process depths of the 60's & early 70's back to a period where the
multiplicity of choices probably rivals the first few decades of this
century.
Carson Graves
carson@ileaf.com