Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1595/147106705X70291
Throughout its 166-year history, the technology explosives, and its frivolous use for photography
of photography has been dominated by the photo- and jewellery was banned.
chemistry of silver halides. Their unique high This put a temporary halt to the production of
sensitivity in development provides the only viable commercial platinotype paper, but Willis respond-
way of capturing a negative instantaneously in the ed by devising a palladium printing paper. Such
camera. But when it comes to printing from the noble metal processes depend on the photochem-
black and white negative to produce a mono- istry of iron(III) polycarboxylates, which have a
chrome positive, the brevity of exposure is not an light sensitivity so low that one can only make con-
important consideration, so the door is open to tact prints from same-sized negatives, necessitating
using other, less sensitive photochemical process- the use of large format cameras. Eventually, the
es. Thus the exposure times used for printing can competition with more sensitive silver halide
be lengthy and the printing-light sources intense. papers, produced in response to the need for
Throughout the history of photography, many enlarging miniature camera negatives, led to
alternative non-silver printing processes have Williss Platinotype Company being wound up in
been devised in the quest to make images more 1937 (5).
permanent and artistically attractive than those When image quality and archival permanence
provided by the silver media (1). Even in the dawn are paramount considerations, the prime alterna-
of photography, in 1839, Sir John Herschel stated: tive to silver printing still remains the platinotype,
and analogous palladiotype. Since the 1970s dis-
I was on the point of abandoning the use of silver in satisfaction with the commercial silver-gelatin
the enquiry altogether and having recourse to Gold or printing monoculture led some photographic
Platina (2). artists, especially in the U.S.A., to rediscover the
The pioneers of the new art-science had already 19th century method of platinotype, and to coat
recognised that platinum could be an admirable their own sensitised papers with solutions of the
image substance in its finely divided (nanoparticle) appropriate chemicals: iron(III) oxalate and potas-
state. Platinum is far more inert than silver. In the sium tetrachloroplatinate(II) (6).
polluted atmospheres of the Victorian industrial
age, silver suffered from a serious vulnerability to The Book
sulfiding, which now accounts for the faded, pale The Focal Press book, Platinum & Palladium
brown look of many 19th century silver pho- Printing, Second Edition, by Dick Arentz
tographs (3). describes itself as the only comprehensive work on this
However, it took another fifty years before a subject, and so commands our serious attention.
photochemical means of printing images in plat- This book is not a history (7) nor yet a chemistry
inum black was perfected by William Willis (4). It (8) of the process, for which the reader must look
then became the preferred medium of leading pho- elsewhere. Arentzs treatise is intended as a practi-
tographic artists for a further three decades, until cal manual of instruction, providing a fully detailed
the Great War decreed that platinum was a strate- account of one method of accomplishing palladi-
gic material for catalysing the manufacture of um-platinum prints, and of creating the large
photographic negatives that are the prerequisites. characteristic curves of optical density versus
The only rival sources of published instruction in log(relative exposure), is the mainstay of this work;
these skills, which are admittedly briefer, can be so any readers unfamiliar with these concepts may
found within multi-topic works on what has come find themselves a trifle challenged.
to be called alternative photography (9). In view of the authors concern for technical
precision, it is a reviewers melancholy duty to
Traditional Palladium-Platinum report some rather unfortunate errors. Chapter 3
Printing on The Negative deals with photographic sensit-
Arentz is the master-craftsman leading the ometry, but when it comes to explaining
school of traditional palladium-platinum printing logarithms and their relationship to photographic
in the U.S.A. The technical content of his book is stops, it makes at least five mistakes in elementary
visually leavened by duotone plates exemplifying mathematics in the space of half a page: for
his own exquisite landscape images, which were instance, a density of 4.0 is not equivalent to 100
executed originally in the giant format of 12 stops, as stated, but 13.3 stops. Likewise, the
20. His workroom equipment, resources, and chemically-literate reader will be distressed to see
practices are minutely delineated in Chapter 2, in Chapter 4, on Chemicals, formulae written as
Setting Up a Laboratory, and provide a counsel of K2CR7O7 (for potassium dichromate), K2C2O2 (for
perfection for all practical workers in this arena. potassium oxalate), and C6H5NA3 (for sodium cit-
This book will therefore appeal chiefly to advanced rate), among others, which are solecisms as
photographic print-makers, especially those accus- uncomfortable to a chemists eye as spelling errors
tomed to large format practice, who are competent to a reader, and which will not inspire confidence.
in the control of exposure and development to
achieve precalibrated density parameters, as exem- Paper
plified by Ansel Adamss celebrated Zone System. While all the other printing parameters are con-
The sensitometry of photographic materials, mea- trollable, the paper substrate remains the last great
sured by step-tablet testing and plotting the imponderable in hand-crafted platinum-palladium
processes, since the constituents of the sensitiser Chapter 7, Choose Your Method, is not as
are in intimate contact with any additives in the wide in scope as it sounds, being solely concerned
paper that may prove hostile and inhibiting to the with the method of contrast control in the print. If
chemistry. In the mid 1980s, mainly for environ- the extensive advice about the correct making of
mental and conservation reasons, the methods of negatives were to be followed in the first place,
industrial paper manufacture underwent a pro- much of this Chapter would be superfluous.
found change. However, the new papers produced Chapter 8, on Calibration, provides more instruc-
while admirable for other purposes did not suit tion in controlling print contrast, and Chapter 9,
the platinum printer. Chapter 5 on Paper carries The Platinum and Palladium Print, describes the
a useful survey of tests on many commercial fine modus operandi of coating paper, exposure to ultra-
art papers now available in the U.S.A., and violet light, and processing.
reviews their suitability for palladium-platinum Chapter 10 on Advanced Technique describes
printing, and how problems with them may be the effects of humidity, variations in the develop-
overcome by acidification. ing procedure, and the finishing of prints, and
In Chapter 6, The First Print, the reader will Chapter 11, Problems, is, unsurprisingly, on trou-
discover how to make a palladium print but only bleshooting.
provided that the reader has purchased a particu- The remaining half of the book (116 pages) is
lar chemical kit (10). This is because the devoted almost entirely to negatives and sensitom-
instructions in this book are wedded to the prod- etry. This is aimed at precisely matching the optical
ucts of a particular U.S. supplier of pre-packaged density range of the negative to the logarithmic
chemical solutions for palladium-platinum print- exposure range of the process. Thus Chapter 12 is
ing. While this may be a convenient dependency, it about The Film and Paper Curves, and lastly
may ultimately limit the books usefulness. Chapter 13 is about Using the Print Curves. After
The Reviewer