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Horatio Ross
From the early days of
photography, photographers searched for a means of producing permanent
images.
Horatio Ross, an early member of the Photographic Society of Scotland
in the 1850s wrote, twenty years later, to the British Journal of
Photography.
His letter began:
"There are three
processes which are supposed to be permanent, namely the heliotype, the
Woodbury and the autotype. The two former are quite out of the question:
they require expensive and bulky machinery, attended with an amount
of difficult manipulations which amateurs are not likely to encounter"
"The autotype is more
hopeful, but until it is made cheaper and a good deal easier to work, I do
not think it will be generally adopted."
"For the present
amateurs must be satisfied with silver printing; and, speaking from a very
long experience, I take a much more cheerful view of the permanence of
silver prints than most people do. These pictures have got a bad
name; but it has arisen from a cause which is not difficult to explain."
"We live in times when,
owing to competition, cheapness is much more thought of than good quality;
and this has forced professional photographers to send out prints which
they know are not half washed, and which they equally well know must fade
in a few years."
" ... ... I am satisfied
that if amateurs (I address this communication entirely to them) are
content to print a small number of pictures at a time - say
half-a dozen - to put some carbonate of ammonia in the hypo
fixing bath (for which there is a good chemical reason), and then expose
them for three or four hours to a continuous stream of water, always
changed by means of a syphon, most of their prints will be blooming long
after the greater number of my amateur friends have faded away for ever."
[BJP:14 July 1876; p.330] |
