From: Darryl Baird (dbaird@flint.umich.edu)
Date: 04/10/00-05:08:36 PM Z
Suzzanne, I have two responses to your second question so far:
1.
You are indeed correct. The negative plates needed to be exposed while
still wet, but prints could be made from the dried plates at any time
later. The scarcity of prints had to do with the difficulty of making
mammoth prints and how viable they were commercially and then surviving
the
intervening years intact.
Stephen Perloff, Editor
The Photo Review / The Photograph Collector
2.
Successful prints could definitely wait until the photographer returned
with
his dried wet plate negatives to the more controlled atmosphere of his
studio dark room.
William Notman carefully preserved all of his negatives so that reprints
could be had at any time, and we are still printing from his wet plates.
One
of the advantages over the ambrotype was the availability of later
prints
without having to sit for another session and his comprehensive
numbering
system was put in place because of the necessity of locating a negative
taken some time ago for a reprint. Notman's negatives are varnished to
make
sure they would be available for some time after they were created, and
we
have about 100,000 of them, all completely dry by now...
The tour guide was mistaken.
Nora Hague, Senior Cataloger / Access 2D
Notman Photographic Archives
McCord Museum of Canadian History
-- Darryl Baird
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