Photography: Through The Years

From Lennie Bennett’s (Times Art Critic) article in the January 16, 2011 edition of the St. Pete Times:

“The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg has quietly become one of the major repositories of photography in the southeastern United States.

Two gifts in 2009 and 2010 rocketed its holdings from about 1,500 to more than 14,000 images that cover almost all known photographic methods beginning with daguerreotypes and salt prints from the mid 19th century to gelatin silver prints of the mid 20th century.”

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Photography has been a passion of mine for many years, and blessed today with a new digital darkroom I was intrigued to experiment with some of the photo methods mentioned in Ms. Bennett’s article. All of the images presented here were taken with 35 mm color negative film while on a trip to the village of Batopilas at the bottom of the Copper Canyon in Mexico. (Click on an image to enlarge)

Daguerrotype - 1839 to 1855. Images were captured on a thin sheet of silver plated copper.
(Satevo vaqueros and a supply train from Creel)

Albumen - 1855 to the 1890s. Negatives were captured on glass and the print was created on paper that used albumen from egg whites.
(A Taramuhara homestead)

Platinum - 1873 to 1920. Platinum was used in the developing materials and placed paper in direct contact with the negative. This process fell out of favor due to the high cost of platinum.

Autochrome, an early color process developed in 1904 that used potato starch granules dyed red, green, and blue.
 (Entering Batopilas) 

Box cameras, popular from 1900 through 1960 made photography simple and portable - anyone could take a picture.
(A farmhouse in the Sierra Madres)

Cross Process - this was a more modern technique that created unique color effects by mismatching the film and the chemicals used to develop that film.
(In the distance, the Cathedral of Satevo)

This is just a very small sample of photo styles and techniques, and is not meant to be all inclusive. You can enjoy the real thing in art museums on both sides of the bay, but this was a fun exercise for me.