218
be republished and completed by supplements in 1899,
1903, 1907 and 1912.
Brogi travelled to and participated in, with his col-
leagues Alinari and Anderson, the Berlin International
Exhibition of Amateur Photographs in September 1896.
There he showed panoramas of Florence, paintings and
sculptures of the Uffi ci Museum. With the intention of
satisfying the new tourist bourgeois and following the
market tendency, Carlo published in 1898 a special
catalogue of stereoscopic views of paintings, sceneries
and sculptures. Less expensive and smaller in dimen-
sion, those images of popular entertainment were more
attractive for the larger public, and in 1900 at the Uni-
versal Exhibition in Paris, Carlo received a gold medal
for this work.
During this time, Carlo kept publishing photographs
separately and in albums on specifi c subjects and in
exhibitions. In 1904, the drawings of civil and military
Italian architects from the 15th to 18th centuries from
the Offi ces museum were displayed in a fourteen page
catalogue with one hundred and twenty six illustrations.
That year at the exhibition in Florence, he documented
the antics and works of art from Sienna. In 1909, he
reproduced the museum of Sienna and in 1911 an ex-
hibition of portraits. From 1911 to 1919, Carlo edited
a monthly bulletin that covered the publications of his
fi rm’s “Giacomo Brogi, Fotografo-editore,” as the Braun
company did in the 1930’s. This self-advertisement
provided an effective method to communicate to the
public and his clients.
Carlo died on April 25, 1925, a few weeks after his
bother Alfredo. Their sister Eugenia took over as the
manager with her husband Laurati who died in 1926.
In the 1940, their son Giorgio and his operator Gino
Malenotti, very appreciated for his sculpture reproduc-
tions, gave a new impetus to the fi rm. Subjected to the
competition with Alinari, to the 1944 bombardment and
to the Arno fl ood 1966, which destroyed a part of the
archives, the prosperity of the fi rm collapsed.
Almost 50,000 negatives were given up to Earl Vit-
torio Cini, who also bought both Alinari and Anderson
in 1963, which placed the three most prestigious collec-
tions into one. A hundred of prints of various techniques
from the Brogi production of the end of the 19th century
and from the Giorgio Laurati settlement were added to
this collection in 1988. Brogi’s archives are kept in the
Alinari Museum in Florence. One can also fi nd a large
number of his photographs all over Europe and the
United States in 19th century tourists albums, libraries
photographic collections, artists’ private collections,
Gustave Moreau and Rodin for instance, and in Uni-
versity collections. These images remain an important
source of documentation of Italian art and architecture
from antiquity to the modern age.
Laure Boyer
See Also: Fratelli Alinari.Further Reading
Michel & Michelle Auer, Encyclopédie internationale des
photographes de 1839 à nous jours, Paris, Camera obscura,
1985.
Brogi, Firenze e Toscana catalogo, fotografi e, Brogi, s.d.
Brogi, Catalogo delle Fotografi e artistiche publicate dallo stabili-
mento Giacomo Brogi, seguito al catalogo 1878, Firenze,
Napoli, 1899.
Monique Le Pelley Fonteny, Adolphe Gira udon, une bibliothèque
photographique, 2005, notice 91–92.
Silvia Silvestri, ‘‘Lo studio Brogi a Firenze,’’ A.F.T., Rivista di
Storio e Fotografi a, n°20, decembre 1994, 9–12.
Silvana Turzio, ‘‘Brogi Giacomo et Carlo,’’ Dictionnaire mondial
de la photographie, Larousse, Paris, 1994, 103.BROMIDE PRINT
Silver-based photographic materials depend on a com-
pound of silver nitrate and a halogen such as chlorine,
iodine, and/ or bromine. This produces a chemical reac-
tion, apparent as a darkening of the sensitised area in the
presence of actinic light. Silver bromide paper uses the
most sensitive of these halogens, and was derived from
Richard Leach Maddox’s formula for dry plate nega-
tives; silver nitrate and cadmium bromide in a gelatin
binder, exposed for a latent image and amplifi ed through
chemical development. In 1874, gelatin silver bromide
paper was advertised by Peter Mawdsley’s Liverpool
Dry Plate Company, but the paper was not successful.
In 1879, Joseph Wilson Swan patented and initiated the
manufacture of ‘bromide printing paper,’ as did E. Lamy
in France. Improvements in coating technology were
introduced by Eastman and Company in Rochester in
1884, and gelatin bromide paper was perfected over the
following twenty years. By the 1920s, it had become the
standard paper for black-and-white photographs, modi-
fi ed in the 1970s as a mixed emulsion variable contrast
paper, combined with silver chloride.
Pure silver bromide paper had commercial and
industrial applications, but was initially too fi nicky
for amateurs: its sensitivity required a safelight for
the darkroom, and it printed so rapidly that the correct
exposure was diffi cult to judge. Photographers were
accustomed to daylight contact printing-out paper;
developed-out paper produced only a latent image and
so could not be printed by inspection. Although the
timing was crucial, mechanical timers were rudimen-
tary. Furthermore, each manufacturer made paper of a
different sensitivity, so that exposure times varied and
had to be determined through trial and error. For these
reasons, the fi rst commercial bromide paper was ef-
fectively contact-speed. It was used for enlarging from
the early 1890s, once photosensitivity could be gauged
and timers improved.