>I too am interested in finding processes which do not use gelatin, or
>other animal products. Other than my use of film and papers for
>my photographic work, I live a strict vegan lifestyle.
Perhaps not as vegan as you think. Are there windows around your
apartment/house? Are the walls painted? Do you wear glasses? Do you read
books? Is there a windshield on your car? Do you drink beer or wine? Do you
take pills? Do you wear clothes?
If you said yes to any of the above, as I suspect you have, you are very
likely making use of gelatin. We had an extensive thread on this (now in
the archives) 2 or 3 years ago. Gelatin is used in *thousands* of products
in ways you can't even begin to imagine.
The best single source of scientific information on photographic technology
is Pierre Glafkidès, massive _Chimie et physique Photographique_, which
covers just about everything that's been written in a dozen languages or
so. The most recent edition is out of print and used book dealers have
lists of customers anxious to pay over $1,000 for a copy. A PhD chemistry
student on this list just told me that there are only 2 copies in American
university libraries and needless to say, they are not circulating. With a
group of people, I'm trying to convince the publisher to have it reprinted.
In the meantime, a good science library could do a search through Chemical
Abstracts, patent abstracts, etc. and come up with plenty of information on
non-gelatin based emulsions but from what I have been reading, nothing has
approached the qualities of gelatin so far. The issue with manufacturers,
has not been ethical as much as practical. If they could synthesize
something like high grade gelatin from scratch and make the process
perfectly repeatable, they would be able to obtain emulsions with
predictible characteristics, but so far, no go. There have been a few
non-gelatin emulsions on the market, notably in the graphic arts area but
AFAIK none became successful despite millions of dollars of research spent
over decades.
Speaking of ethics and photography, if there is ever an effective
substitute for gelatin you may want to make sure that they are not wiping
out half the Amazon rain forest to make it... as opposed to recycling
by-products...
Finally, there are processes that would not make use of (much) gelatin,
i.e., the wet collodion (glass plate) process, the tintype, the ambrotype,
the albumen process... Depending on where you live, you may have to obtain
a licence that enables you to handle explosives before you get some of the
raw materials... No easy solution, as usual.
Luis Nadeau
nadeaul@nbnet.nb.ca
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada