1509
In 1848 he moved to Glasgow, where he married Helen
Kenlo Stephen in 1851, who bore him thirteen children.
Most of the pictures of his varied photographical oeuvre
were taken in the late 1840s until mid 1850s but he
continued to experiment with printing processes until
the mid-1860s. He died in 1892 in Cove on the west
coast of Scotland. His work is preserved in the Scottish
National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.
See also: Amateur Photographers, Camera Clubs, and
Societies; Hill, David Octavius, and Robert Adamson;
Edinburgh Calotype Club; and Talbot, William Henry
Fox.
Further Reading
Coppens, Jan,.‘Britse kalotypisten in Nederland en België.’ In
Door de enkele werking van het licht: Introductie en integratie
van de fotografi e in België en Nederland 1839–1969, edited
by Jan Coppens, Laurent Roosens and Karel van Deuren,
179–193. Antwerp: Gemeentekrediet, 1989.
Stevenson, Sara, Julie Lawson, and Michael Gray, The Pho-
tography of John Muir Wood: An Accomplished Amateur
1805–1892, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1988.
WOODBURY, WALTER BENTLEY
(1834–1885)
English photographer and inventor
Walter Bentley Woodbury, inventor of the Woodbury-
type photomechanical printing process, was born in
Manchester, England on 26 June 1834. He showed
signs scientifi c tendencies and, as a youth, mastered
the diffi cult wet-collodion process soon after it was
published in 1851.
Woodbury arrived in Melbourne in October 1852, but
instead of going to the goldfi elds as planned, he decided
to put his photographic skills to use. He was one of the
earliest wet-plate photographers in Australia and at the
1854 Melbourne Exhibition won a medal for a set of
‘9 views of Melbourne, taken by the Collodion process
on glass.’ A versatile photographer, he took panoramas
and stereo photographs as well as conventional views,
and even made his own collodion. He set up a studio
in North Melbourne and for a time operated studios on
the Victorian goldfi elds.
In 1857 Woodbury, with his associate James Page,
travelled to Java. After Woodbury solved the problem of
working the collodion process under tropical conditions
their photographic business became highly successful.
In addition to their commissioned work they travelled
the country taking photographs for sale. Woodbury’s
stereo views, published by Negretti and Zamba,
were favourably reviewed in the British Journal of
Photography.
Shortly after returning to England in 1863 with
capital from his Java business, he devoted himself to
solving the serious problems which were inhibiting
the sale of photographic books—the slow production
rate of albumen prints and their tendency to fade. He
moved from silver-based chemistry to the permanent but
imperfect dichromate-based carbon process of Alphonse
Poitevin, the main shortcoming of which was the poor
rendering of half-tones. After much arduous work he
was successful in combining Poitevin’s process with
aspects of Fargier’s carbon process and innovations of
his own. Woodbury arrived at an entirely novel solution
to photomechanical printing for which he fi led British
Patent no. 2338 of 1864. He later improved the process
by incorporating the technique of nature printing in
which the hardened gelatin matrix was forced into a
sheet of lead under high pressure. Prints in pigmented
gelatin were then cast from the resulting lead mould. The
salient features of the Woodburytype printing process
were that it was suitable for high production rates of
high quality images while avoiding the use of introduced
grain or the half-tone screen. The half-tones and delicate
detail were reproduced smoothly and precisely by the
varying thicknesses of pigmented gelatin.
To publicise his process Woodbury himself printed
several thousand images for an insert in The Photographic
News of January 26, 1866, and enthusiastically
promoted his invention by means of demonstrations to
learned societies, entries in exhibitions and articles in
the photographic press. In 1875 he produced a photo-
book Treasure Spots of the World as a demonstration
of the superb quality of well-made Woodburytype
reproductions. Although the cost of the necessary
machinery put Woodburytype out of the reach of
small operators, it became the process of choice for
high quality illustrated books as well as being equally
suited to the mass production of ephemeral items such
as cartes-de-visite of stage personalities to be given
away as advertising material. In one notable instance
30,000 prints were made in one day. Woodbury licensed
the process in several countries. It was also adapted
successfully for the production of lantern slides in large
quantities.
Described as ‘technically perfect’ and the most
beautiful printing process ever invented-it was, however,
not without its problems. The afterwork on the prints
was labour-intensive as each sheet had to be hardened
in an alum bath, washed, dried, trimmed, and mounted.
Furthermore, the prints could not be combined with
letterpress.
In 1879 Woodbury patented the simplified
Stannotype process but the modifi cation came too late
to compete with cheaper but inferior processes. The
1884 Woodburygravure process was more compatible
with book production but also failed to gain acceptance.
Woodburytype was highly successful in England and on