1380
lenteurs de l’albumine et plus encore peut-être du défaut
de solidité du collodion,” extract from the Bulletin de
la Société française de photographie, 1855, 234). The
unique solution the photographer had found, was to
put varnish on the negative plate poured with wet col-
lodion to give them stability. However, this result was
expensive and not easy for people who were living in
the countryside as was Taupenot (la Flèche is about 300
km far from Paris).
That is the reason that he had the idea to combine both
techniques. As the main principle, he substituted the
varnish with albumen, a nitrogenous substance found in
egg white, making it less costly and easier to obtain.
As an amateur photographer, Taupenot’s research
was a great help to other photographers. He did not
patent his process, making it freely available to all, but
he was aware of its importance. He created an album of
photographs that he presented and offered to the emperor
Napoleon the Third, who decided to add his pictures to
the Exposition Universelle in Paris the same year. The
scientist even won a bronze medal for his work.
In this album, the photographs presented the proces-
sion of the Fête-Dieu (in June), in the Prytanée: the
students in the gymnasium, the chapel of the School,
the Library, the Laboratory, the garden and the park. As
a matter of fact, he had to prove that his process could
be used inside as well as outdoor.
A professional chemist and physician, he was looking
for the acknowledgement of his colleagues: that is the
reason he presented his discovery to the French Acad-
emy of Sciences. One of the most important scientists of
this time, Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889), made
the report about it.
At the same time, he described his process before the
members of the Société française de photographie, in
September 1855. He brought with him several samples
of photographs made with his technique in order to show
the good quality of images he obtained. A commission
constituted of MM. Bayle-Mouillard, Bayard, Humbert
de Molard, Fortier and Fierlants, was gathered to test
the invention.
The Taupenot process consisted of a classical collo-
dion preparation sensitized with iodide of ammonium,
to which he added a mix of fermented albumen, honey,
iodide of potassium, and water with brewer’s yeast.
Taupenot coated the glass with the collodion, as the
photographer used to do, and he washed it with water.
Then he poured the collodion glass with the albumen and
drained it off until the albumin was dry. To sensitize the
plates and use them, the photographers had to put them
in a bath of aceto-nitrate as used for the classical albumen
process. The scientist used the gallic acid, a classic modus
operandi in the 1850s, to reveal his negatives.
With this process, the glasses could be exposed more
than one month after their preparation.
The most important problem with the collodio-albu-
men technique was the exposure. It required a longer
time exposure than the collodion-based one (sometimes
eight times more). The photographs he showed at the
French Photographic Society were obtained with an ex-
posure time between six seconds and one minute, mak-
ing this technique perfectly suitable for representing still
life, landscapes and architectures, but not fast enough to
be used for portraits. The quality of the photographs was
as subtle and delicate as with the albumen process.
The notice of this discovery was spread all over the
world, relayed by the newspapers specialized in pho-
tography and the photographic societies. This process
has been used by many photographers particularly
from Austria, the French Louis Alphonse Davanne and
Alphonse François Jeanrenaud, among others. Several
names were given to the Taupenot’s technique: collodio-
albumen process, dry plate process, Taupenot process,
albumenised collodion.
The apex of the Taupenot process was between the
middle of the 1850s and the 1870s. By these times, dif-
ferent people were looking for a better technique than
the wet collodion process and tried to dry the coated mix.
Such attempts include Fothergill’s process invented in
1856, the tannin process of Major Russel in 1861, and
Bolton & Sayce’s process, which added silver-bromide
to collodion. However, Taupenot’s walked away the
support of the amateur photographers.
In the same spirit of this fi rst invention, the simplifi ca-
tion of the photographic technique, Jean Marie Taupenot
also presented to the French photographic society, in
January 1856, a little device everyone could realize,
that he named “chercheur” (researcher). It looked like a
small cork tube pierced with a round hole at one extrem-
ity and a square hole at the other extremity. This last
hole should have the same ratio as the negative glass.
In fact, it had the same purpose that the “iconometer”:
fi nding the best position to give to the camera.
Taupenot’s photographs were not particularly worthy
for their aesthetics: he was an amateur and his practice
was mostly a validation of his chemistry research on
photography. Unlike other chemists, he never advertised
his work by publishing books, and these pictures are
the sole testimony of his studies. They are conserved
in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the French
Photographic Society.
Marion PercevalSee also: Wet Collodion Negative; Archer, Frederick
Scott; Le Gray, Gustave; Niépce de Saint-Victor,
Claude Félix Abel; Chevreul, Michel-Eugène;
Bayard, Hippolyte; Humbert de Molard, Baron
Louis-Adolphe; Krone, Hermann; Davanne, Louis-
Alphonse; Expositions Universelle, Paris (1854, 1855,
1867 etc.) and Sayce, B.J.