219
While many art photographers wished for prints with a
plain or laid surface like that of drawing or watercolour
paper, this was hard to achieve with contact papers,
which needed a relatively smooth fi nish to provide a good
contact with the glass plate negative and a reasonable
resolution in the positive print. A bumpy surface would
scatter the light, soften outlines and break up detail. Pro-
jection-speed papers addressed the problem, as they did
not need a smooth surface for contact printing, and this
encouraged the production of rough or textured papers.
Although a number of companies introduced rough pa-
pers in the 1890s, they were not widely available, as the
demand was limited. Rough papers were hardly suitable
for small format portraits, and these made up the bulk of
the photographic market.
Until the early 1890s, matt silver papers had only
a thin gelatin silver emulsion and often omitted the
baryta (barium sulphate in a gelatin binder) subbing
layer. Baryta, once adopted for bromide papers, could
be embossed for a textured surface. ‘Platino’ bromide
papers used added starch fl our for a matt fi nish. Bromide
papers did not adopt the pastel pink, blue, and purple
bases of silver chloride printing-out papers, as these
clashed with the neutral image colour; instead, the baryta
subbing layer was tinted cream or ivory.
Bromide developing-out paper tends to a grey-black
image colour, because developed-out silver is deposited
as a tangle of fi lamentary silver whose light absorbing
properties gives the appearance of a neutral image.
From 1892, Eastman produced an ‘Extra-Rapid Bro-
mide Paper’ advertised as producing a range of hues
from black to sepia. Sepia toning with sodium sulphide
was not common practice until the early 1900s, but by
1890, uranium nitrate was used as a toner for brown
hues on matt silver bromide paper. In the nineteenth
century, the most common toner for bromide papers
was platinum.
Although John Herschel’s early work with platinum
chloride had focused on its suitability for toning, this
application was not perfected until the late 1880s,
when Lyonel Clark adapted William Willis’s cold-bath
platinotype process for toning commercial gelatin silver
and home-made salted papers. Valentine Blanchard
introduced other formulas for a warm brown or black im-
age colour, and represented ‘Blanchard’s Platino-Black
Paper’ with eleven prints at the 1890 exhibition of the
Photographic Society of Great Britain. Others, including
Alfred Stieglitz, announced similar methods, and Lyonel
Clark published a book on the subject. Platinum toning
of silver bromide was most common from about 1895
until the early 1920s. Platinum was sometimes combined
with palladium, particularly for toning homemade silver
chloride papers. Pure palladium was also used for ton-
ing, but the results were unreliable and not believed to
be any better than the combined platinum-palladium or
uranium toning.
In the 1890s, the escalating price of platinum encour-
aged cheaper substitutes, and ‘platino’ bromide papers
were manufactured with a matt fi nish and cold-neutral
image colour to mimic the visual characteristics of
platinotypes. In 1891, the Fry Manufacturing Company
introduced a ‘Naturalistic’ Bromide Paper on a rough-
surfaced Whatman base, which the Amateur Photogra-
pher reported as readily producing “soft tones, almost
equalling those of a platinum print.”
Increasingly, manufacturers made this comparison
explicit: in 1894, Eastman brought out ‘Platino-Bromide’
paper, and Wellington and Ward followed with ‘Platino-
Matt Bromide.’ This advanced the acceptance of silver
bromide paper for art photography and exhibition prints.
But bromide prints were vulnerable to the residual sul-
phur compounds from the thiosulphate fi xing bath, which
led to yellowing and fading of the metallic silver image.
Indeed, many ‘platino-bromide’ papers were intended to
be toned with platinum, which substantially enhanced
their stability and more nearly approximated the hue and
tonal characteristics of platinotypes.
Silver bromide papers are susceptible to oxidative-
reductive ‘tarnishing’ from acids (from handling or
airborne contaminants) and staining and sulphiding
from residual fi xing chemicals. The gelatin binder may
show damage from moisture, evident in spots of mould
and in delamination from the paper base. These issues
persist in modern gelatin bromide paper.
Hope KingsleySee Also: Blanchard, Valentine; Dry Plate Negatives:
Gelatine; Dry Plate Negatives: Non-Gelatine,
Including Dry Collodion; Enlarging and Reducing;
Herschel, Sir John Frederick William; Maddox,
Richard Leach; Photographic Exchange Club and
Photographic Society Club, London; Platinotype Co.
(Willis & Clements); Stieglitz, Alfred; and Willis,
William.Further Reading
Bayley, R. Child. The Complete Photographer, London: Methuen
& Co., 1906, revised 1920.
Burton, William K. The ABC of Modern Photography, London:
Piper and Carter, 1882, 1890.
Clark, Lyonel. Platinum Toning, London: Hazell, Watson and
Viney, 1890.
Eder, Josef Maria. History of Photography, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1905, 1932, 1945.
Editorial. Amateur Photographer, vol. 13, no. 331, 1891, 92.
Somerville, C. Winthrope. “Bromide Printing,” in The Barnet
Book of Photography, Barnet, Hertfordshire (UK): Elliot &
Sons, Ltd., 1898 revised 1906.