From: Richard Knoppow (dickburk@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 03/28/03-08:37:50 PM Z
----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 4:25 PM
Subject: Re: AMAZING carbro
>
> On Fri, 28 Mar 2003, Tod Gangler wrote:
> > That would be Gerard Aniere, a Frenchman who has made
his home in England
> > these last many years. He's an expert printmaker in
many alt-processes,
> > including cyanotype, salt, albumin, dye transfer, and
even gum. These
> > prints are actually color carbon prints. Gerard just
likes to call them
> > carbros. He thinks that someone might actually have
heard of carbro and
> > know what it is, imagine! All the materials are made by
hand by Gerard.
>
> > The enlarged negatives for contact printing are digital
film negatives from
> > a high resolution imagesetter.
Lots of snipping...
FWIW, the history of the Carbon and Carbro process are
very well known and are described in readily available
books.
Carbro is a carbon print made by placing the carbon tissue
in contact with a B&W silver print. There is a reaction by
which the dichromate selectively hardens the gelatin where
it bleaches out the silver. The two are separated after a
time and the tissue processed as in Carbon printing.
Supposedly the bromide print can be re-developed and re-used
a few times.
The Carbro (for Carbon-Bromide) process was widely used in
the 1930's for making color originals for photomechanical
reproduction. The original negatives being exposed in either
a step-by-step or one-shot color camera.
Three color Carbon or Carbro printing is very fussy and
was done by dedicated labs. While the process is simple in
principle controling all the variables is far from easy.
The Three-color Carbro process was slowly displaced by
dye-transfer printing beginning in the late 1930s.
Dye-transfer is itself fussy but much less so than Carbro
plus the resulting images look sharper. Both methods were
eventually pretty much replaced for photo mechanical work by
Kodachrome, the color seps being made directly from the
transparencies. The improvement in quality can be seen
easily in publications which indicate the method of
printing, such as some editions of U.S. Camera Annual.
There has been a resurgence of interest in both
Dye-Transfer and Carbon printing in the last couple of years
and materials for both are, or more accurately, have been,
available recently.
Carbon and Carbro consist of very thin sheets of gelatin
colored with pigments. In general they are more stable than
dyes.
Paul Outerbridge was a well known photographer of the
1930's through 1950's, specializing in color work. He wrote
at least one book, the last time I saw one for sale it was
priced at around $100 US, too rich for my blood.
While the best known maker of Carbon tissue was
Autochrome, in England, most commercial work in the U.S. was
done with materials made here by people like Thomas S.
Curtis, a maker of one-shot color cameras.
--- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA dickburk@ix.netcom.com
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