From: Alan Greene (hobbyhorsedada@hotmail.com)
Date: 01/08/03-07:12:11 PM Z
Richard,
Sorry for the shameless plug, but you should check out chapter five of my
book, Primitive Photography: A Guide to Making Cameras, Lenses, and
Calotypes. This chapter specifically concerns making salt prints by
development and goes into much more detail than I can possibly reiterate
here--the "Serum Process" being a good starter. Essentially, however, it may
be said that developed-out salt printing came into fruition in the 1850s and
was practiced to a large extent by the likes of Louis-Désiré
Blanquart-Évrard, Frederick Hardwich, and Thomas Sutton. All of these
practitioners used silver nitrate in excess (e.g., an 8% solution of silver
nitrate washed over paper containing a 1-2% salt solution). This
necessitated a physical development with a relatively neutral developer like
gallic acid--wherein the reduced silver in the paper became a significant
factor in development. Contemporary accounts of POP salt printing likewise
use similar silver to salt ratios with silver in excess, so the same problem
holds true here. If you were to use an "off the shelf" developer--all of
them containing an alkaline accelerator--the alkalinity would ruin the
resulting image, blackening it all over. One possible exception to this,
however, might be a dilution of Microdol-X (1:3 or higher), since it is only
slightly alkaline--but I have never tried it with salted paper containing
silver in excess, so I cannot say for sure. Ye olde Kodak D-25 (7.5g Metol,
100g sodium sulfite, and 15g sodium bisulfite dissolved in a liter of
distilled water), again diluted in a similar manner, might even be better,
as it is strictly neutral. A safer bet, however, seems to be a 1% solution
of gallic acid (i.e., one gram gallic acid dissolved in 100ml of warm
distilled water) and has the added benefit in that it is historically
accurate for the process in question. You can purchase gallic acid from
Photographers' Formulary or order it through a kindly, independent
pharmacist. Be sure to warm the solution to around 80-90 degrees F. for best
results.
Hope this helps,
Alan Greene
>From: rurmonas@senet.com.au
>Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>Subject: Developed salted paper
>Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 10:10:45 +0000
>
>All the books I have only talk about POP salted paper. I would
>like to dry developing salted paper. Can anyone tell me
>if "off the shelf" paper developers would work, or give a
>suitable formula for a developer ?
>
>Thank you
>
>Richard
>---
>Richard Urmonas
>rurmonas@senet.com.au
>
>
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