Naked Daguerreotype

- Sorry, I couldn't resist the clickbait title!  I've just taken a deep breath and pulled a cased Daguerreotype apart and I thought it was interesting enough to share.   Here's the picture in question. You'll be relieved (or disappointed) to see the subject is fully clothed:

Daguerreotype in original case. Made of wood with a leather cloth covering and a velvet interior. It has protected the delicate image surface well.

Seriously, Daguerreotypes of nudes are rare and highly sought after by collectors. This gentleman is much more typical of the kind of genre portraiture of the 1840s-50s. His head is probably in a brace, which while not actually clamping him in position would probably be uncomfortable or disconcerting, hence his expression. It reminds me of the wonderful scene in Mike Leigh's "Mr Turner" when Timothy Spall as Turner encounters the "Daguerrian Artist" JJE Mayall:

Mr. Tuner (Timothy Spall) poses for a Daguerreotype. The object on the right is a mirror to light his face.

JJE Mayall (Leo Bill) timing the exposure with a pocket watch.

The whole film is terrific but (obviously) I particularly enjoy this scene which shows Turner as interested in the then newfangled process of photography but grumpily sceptical.  This has some basis in fact as Turner did know Mayall, sitting for portraits and discussing photography with him on several occasions.

Anyway, back to my Daguerreotype.  I acquired it with no known provenance so there's no way of knowing who the gentleman is. It was in the usual covered wooden case which had split in the usual way(!) along the hinge. Most of these cases rely on the leathercloth covering forming the hinge between the two halves rather than a metal fitment and they eventually wear out. The condition of the image was very good but the cover glass was filthy and there was a lot of dust and debris on the inside surface as well as the plate itself.

The usual advice to anyone thinking of taking a Daguerreotype apart is "Don't!" They are very delicate and repair or restoration work is best left to a specialist restorer. I'd agree with this if the image is especially valuable such as a portrait of a family member, though any image which has survived for over 150 years should be cherished.  What follows therefore is NOT meant to be a 'how to..' guide to Daguerreotype restoration but just for interest to see how they are put together.

The case is made of wood, covered in a kind of leathercloth (actually a kind of leather-textured paper or fabric) material. The image side has a velvet border which holds the plate, mount and cover glass in place. On this one they weren't fixed in place and very careful levering with a scalpel lifted them out.

The three layers are important. The glass protects the surface from touch, atmospheric pollutants, damp and dirt. The mount keeps the glass from touching the plate and the plate itself is sealed around the edges with paper tape to keep the whole image area in its own little micro-climate. If this is all intact then don't mess with it. In this case the paper tape had entirely disintegrated, with bits falling down onto the image surface. The lack of a seal around the edge meant that dirt and velvet fibres were also free to fall in and obscure and possibly damage the plate. 

After cleaning the glass with warm water (I didn't use a cleaner as solvents can remain and attack the image) and wiping the metal mount it was time to look at the image itself.

A Daguerreotype image is incredibly delicate. If you touch the plate surface it's perfectly possible to wipe the image off completely. It's easy to leave residue from skin etc. or microscopic scratches so however much crud there might be on the surface the advice is don't touch it with anything!  

The Contemporary Daguerreotype artist community website: http://cdags.org  has a whole section on repairs and cleaning if you're actually contemplating it. 

http://cdags.org/forums/forum/collecting-preserving-and-restoring-daguerreotypes/  

I wouldn't even dare use a canned air blower or my own breath to remove dust: Both can contain moisture or chemicals which deposit on the surface. I used my Giotto "Rocket" air blower as used on digital sensors as it just blows the ambient air around.

Here's the bare plate after dusting. There's a fleck of something on the shoulder which has left a red stain on the plate- possibly the copper coming through (Daguerreotypes are made from a copper plate with a thin electroplated layer of silver on top) but the blower wouldn't shift it. I resisted the urge to poke at it and left it alone.  The rainbow effect is characteristic of this process and as it follows the shape of the mount it's clearly caused by either light or chemical effects (the mount is a gold coloured metal). It looks very beautiful but actually represents deterioration. 

In the copy photograph above the colour is a little exaggerated but it shows that this image was originally hand coloured. There's a little rosiness to the gentleman's cheeks and his hand.  The blue colour of the background might be hand tinting but light areas often acquire a blue tint through a sort of solarisation so it's hard to say. The plate appears to have been hand cut with shears (see the top left corner) and the edges are bevelled slightly. I don't know if this was done with some kind of press or if it's an effect of the polishing process. Bevelled or curved edges would make it easier to polish a small thin plate like this on a buffing wheel with less risk of the eyes catching and distorting the plate.

This is one of the tests of a true Daguerreotype. Seen from an oblique angle the image becomes very silvery and as a negative. The reddish stain on the shoulder shows up well here. Here's a very short video clip showing the effect. 

Note that it's easy to confuse a Daguerreotype with an Ambrotype, and a lot of the ones on Ebay etc. are mis-labelled. Only if it can be viewed as almost mirror-like and as a negative image will it be a genuine Daguerreotype.

Once I was sure the cover glass was completely dry I reassembled everything, re-sealing the edges with archival paper tape. The difficulty with this kind of frame is that the edges are visible so the tape can only be stuck to the edge of the glass and the back of the mount. The velvet holds it all firmly in place at least so no more glues than those in the tape are needed. It's all reversible (the tape can be removed if dampened with water) which is what proper conservators prefer.

A Daguerreotype is a wonderful thing: a crystalline, delicate silvery thing which appears as if painted by fairies more than a mechanical, technical process. I'm fascinated too by the mystery of the sitter: Who was he? Is this the only picture of him ever made?  Where did he live? How? and when? We can never really own these pictures: We are simply custodians for the next generations.

Carbon Printing: First steps...

In response to a query from Hayden Wilde I've done a bit of research into carbon printing.  This has been described as an "elite" process, and in the early days a portrait in carbon cost more than one in platinum.  Carbon has a very long, 'straight line' response which allows great subtlety and smooth gradation of tones. It's also one of the most archival permanent methods around as carbon (essentially soot particles) doesn't degrade: Think of those prehistoric cave paintings.

The Method:
Carbon is a transfer process.  The light sensitive emulsion is coated onto a support sheet called the "tissue" which is contact printed under UV light.  The tissue is then mated to the final print material and allowed to bond.  The gelatin-based emulsion is then softened in warm water until the tissue backing can be removed and the image 'developed' by rinsing away the soft unexposed areas of the emulsion leaving an image made from microscopic carbon particles.

These gentlemen are variously squeegeeing, developing and finishing carbon prints in this illustration from the Autotype Co. book (see below)

Sounds easy doesn't it?  As soon as you start researching however it quickly becomes a lot more complicated. Most of the 'Alchemy' involves making the tissue: A tricky mixture of carbon black or Indian ink in gelatin, coated onto a substrate which needs to be microporous but not too absorbent, strong but flexible, water resistant but soakable etc. etc. - and that's before you get to coating the stuff!  It's potentially messy; the carbon particles can be as fine as cigarette smoke so weighing the dry powder out is a nightmare apparently. The gelatin-carbon solution is known as the "glop" so you can tell what sort of consistency that has. There's lots online and in manuals on how to make carbon tissue, and like so much of the Alt. process world it's full of conflicting advice with everyone (it seems) insisting their method is the Only True Way.

Carbon tissue used to be widely available commercially. The Autotype company was founded in 1868 by Sir Joseph Swan (co-inventor of the light bulb) and it flourished for decades selling a wide variety of different types and colours of carbon tissue for photographic use.

The company still exists. These days it makes specialist film products for the graphic arts industry and computer and 'phone screen coatings. - but sadly no carbon tissue.

Bostick and Sullivan

US readers will be familiar with the company of Dick Bostick and Melody Sullivan.  For years they have been supplying photographic and alternative processing materials, in roughly the same way as Silverprint in the UK. One of their long-term projects has been to re-manufacture carbon tissue commercially and they now sell it through their website: https://www.bostick-sullivan.com

It's available in three colours, black, brown and green.

The only downside is that the shipping costs to the UK are VERY high: - It cost me around £160 in total to get two pieces of tissue sent. It's only supplied in rolls 3 feet wide x 4 feet long and while that makes the use of the tissue economic it does push up the shipping costs!  We shall have to see if we can do anything about this..

First tests with B+S tissue.

The B+S carbon tissue is an excellent product. A beautifully consistent coating on a (reasonably) well behaved backing. It does curl a bit when wet but not excessively. It's not light sensitive as supplied which means it's easier to handle and trim to size in the daylight. You only use pieces the same size as your negative and I found it simplest to cut a set of sheets to exact size before sensitising. any offcuts can be used for test strips.

Sensitising.

To make the tissue light sensitive it needs to be coated in a weak solution of potassium dichromate.  Dichromates are nasty things: Hazardous to health and not good for the environment. The actual solution isn't excessively dangerous as it's only used in concentrations of 0.5% to about 4% max but the raw chemical should be handled with great care, particularly to avoid breathing the dust or getting it on the skin. Once mixed (in a solution of distilled water and isopropyl alcohol) it should still be handled with gloves. Goggles are a good precaution too.

The dichromate is brushed onto the tissue surface with a foam brush and then left to dry in a dark box. Once dry it needs to be used within a day or two as it goes 'off'. though you can apparently freeze it to preserve it.

Exposure.

The tissue needs UV light to expose it so I used my light box. It's quite slow: I found I needed exposures of between 2 and 16 minutes with most negatives. Camera negs tend to be rather too 'flat' for the process so digital negs are really the best way to go. Contrast can be adjusted by altering the dichromate strength but it's not a big range.

Mating the tissue to the support.

The carbon image is only carried by the tissue. It needs to be transferred to the final paper support. While it is possible to coat almost anything (watercolour papers are popular and carbon on opal glass pictures were made around the 1900s) the can be tricky so I followed recommendations and used fixed out photo paper. This is ordinary black and white enlarging paper which has been fixed, washed and dried to remove the silver and leave a suitable gelatin coated paper.  Inkjet materials are also recommended as their microporous surfaces are designed to hold the ink. The gelatin carbon emulsion sticks equally well.

The mating process is easy: a quick dip of both tissue and support in cold water, a brush to remove bubbles and then the two are placed face to face, removed and pressed together with a rubber squeegee.

The squeegeeing removes the excess liquid from between the surfaces and generally that's all that's needed to hold them together. If they curl, put a sheet of glass on top. The mated pieces are left for at least 15 minutes (some recommend much longer) to bond.

Development.

No chemicals are needed, just water at around 38 degrees C to soften the gelatin. The print is placed in a big tray of warm water and allowed to soak there for at least 5 minutes. After that, the tissue (top piece here) can be gently peeled away.

The carbon emulsion is soft and soluble in the highlights and harder in the shadows where it's received more light. Development consists of rinsing away the soft unexposed areas to reveal the image. Above you can see the pigment flowing off the surface in the bottom corner.

As the emulsion is not light sensitive when wet, development can be carried out in normal light. Keep gently agitating the print under the warm water and the image will appear:

Above you can see the image starting to appear. The carbon particles look like ink in water.

Development is complete when no more black runs off the surface. The image is very fragile at this stage: You can see it's started to peel off at the bottom. Putting a dark border around the neg helps avoid this as there's then a hard black-white edge which dissolves less.

Once developed the print should be rinsed in cold water to harden the gelatin and dried. Once dry the image surface is more robust and if using glossy papers you can often see a texture. The dark parts are physically thicker than the light parts and this is visible, even when the print is dry.

Conclusion

If you use ready-made carbon tissue the process is not too messy or difficult to do. Inkjet or fixed-out photo papers are recommended for initial trials as the emulsion (mostly!) stuck well to these. Other materials may need 'sizing': - coating with other substances to encourage the gelatin to stick properly. I've used the Silverprint Alum/gelatin subbing solution for other things in the past: This might be worth a try?

The biggest thing is negative contrast: To get prints which do the process justice the negative has to have a density/exposure curve which corresponds to the carbon emulsion. This is quite long and with little or no appreciable 'toe' or 'shoulder' as far as I can see. I made some tests with some test negs supplied by Beytan Erkmen as they had more overall contrast than my camera negs, but they still had problems with local contrast. I'll do some more research into suitable neg curves and see what might work.

EXPERIMENTING SESSION

(I won't call it a workshop as I won't really be teaching stuff). - I shall do a session in UCA Farnham soon (January 2017 I hope) when we can have more of a chance to experiment together.  I have a few health & safety hoops to jump through first but as soon as we've done all the necessary risk assessment stuff and found a suitable day I'll let you know.   

Note that this is a Alt. Process User's Group session and not a taught UCA one so it's open only to members/authors on this site.  If you're interested in coming along, email me!