new purchases

New acquisitions in my atelier vintage Victorian BACKDROPS... 

see you soon ... dear readers, This time I have very little time.,

THE FEBRUARY meeting IS FULL

... a touch of light.

Golden 

Any damage to the surface of a daguerreotype is IRREMEDIABLE

Dyes and watercolours require similar preservation measures when applied to hand-coloured photographs. Like the photographs themselves, watercolours and dyes applied by hand to photographs are susceptible to light damage and must be housed in dark storage or displayed under dim, indirect light.
Common particulate pollutants can cause watercolour pigments to fade, but the paint surface can be cleaned by lightly dusting with a soft brush to remove dirt.

Oil paint was often applied to tintypes, daguerreotypes, and ambrotypes. As with all photographs, the materials respond negatively to direct light sources, which can cause pigments to fade and darken, and frequent changes in relative humidity and temperature, which can cause the oil paint to crack.
For photographs with substantial damage, the expertise of an oil paintings conservator might be required for treatment.
 Historically, crayon and pastel coloured photographs were sold in a frame under a protective layer of glass, which was often successful in reducing the amount of handling and smudging of the photograph surface.
 Any conservation work on crayon or pastel colour-photographs must retain these original frames and original glass to maintain the authenticity and value of the object. If the photograph is separated from its original enclosure, it can be stored in an archival quality folder until it is framed or cased.

... but in my specific case I apply directly the gold leaf. this technique is very complex on a daguerreotypes.
in fifteen years of experience this is my MUST :)

 Daguerreotype

venus in fur

There would be nothing new in a woman posing as a femme fatale, surrounded by feathers and lying languidly all covered head to toe only with jewels. But in these photos taken by Irina Ionesco, the femme fatale is a child. The opulence of decorations, the excess of luxury objects, the decadent beauty and the laziness of the models were the remarkable signs of Irina Ionesco photography, obsessed by Vanitas symbols like mirrors and skulls and inspired by Victorian era.

Even if Eva was completely unaware of what her body naked could evoke, her mother knew it well and was able to exploit the ambiguity of a baby-sex symbol for easy and predictable commercial gains.

 So Eva appeared in softporn movies, heavily criticized at that time, like Spermula (1976) and Maladolescenza (1977) in which she appeared naked.

 " ROCAILLE"

...we are born under the same star.

Born in Paris 3 september 1935 to a violinist father and trapeze artist mother, Ionesco was abandoned at age four and shipped off to Romania to be brought up by her grandmother and circus family uncles.

She dreamt of being a dancer but with a tiny frame and supple body wound up a snake-lady contortionist, touring cabarets in Europe, Africa and the Middle East with two giant boas for seven years, from 15 to 22.

"I was a slave to the boas, in the end I'd had enough," she says, recalling the fastidiousness of feeding the reptiles, keeping them warm and hauling them from hotel bath to hotel bath.

... Photography came late - and haphazardly, like much of her life.

The old pre-digital-era Nikon F camera she still uses - along with tungsten lighting - dates back to Christmas of '64, a gift from her partner of the time, avant-garde Belgian artist Corneille.

"There're make-up people, stylists, but all anyone asks is for me to be me. They want my universe, my theatrical pictures, my literary memories. Anywhere I shoot, the pictures become mine."

... the beauty of the past.

and happy to be surrounded !!!

Measurements for plate sizes referenced in the inventory are as follows:

 Imperial or Mammoth Plate - Larger than 6 ½" x 8 ½" 

 Whole Plate - 6 ½" x 8 ½" 

 Half Plate - 4 ¼" x 5 ½" 

 Quarter Plate - 3 ¼" x 4 ¼" 

 Sixth Plate - 2 ¾" x 3 ¼" 

 Ninth Plate - 2"x 2 ½" 

 Sixteenth Plate - 1 ½" x 1 ¾"

Silver-based, one-of-a-kind image on silver/copper plate 


...small reality check
A silver-plated copper plate is polished on the silver side to a mirror-like sheen and exposed to iodine vapor, creating a layer of light sensitive silver iodide. A latent image forms after exposure to light in the camera, and the image is developed with heated mercury vapor, fixed in hypo (sodium thiosulfate) and rinsed. Several subsequent developments improved this process, including the addition of bromine fumes and gilding with gold chloride solution.
A daguerreotype is one-of-a-kind photograph, meaning that the process produces only a single image. It can appear as a negative or a positive view of the subject depending on the viewing angle and the lighting conditions. A daguerreotype is subject to tarnish and usually is encased to protect the image.


American daguerreotypes 

Freemason John Higgins Gunn

Perfect tinted American quarter plate Daguerreotype of John Higgis Gunn in his full Freemason regalia.
 Late 1840's. This is a a very special image with good tinting. 

Original seal and case. 

In a untouched condition.

French daguerreotypes  

A nice collection of french daguerreotypes in the typical passe partout mounts. 
 The mounts are without frames unless otherwise mentioned.

Red velvet

A tinted French 4th plate oval daguerreotype in a black leather case with a rich red velvet liner.
A jewel of a combination of image, mat and case.
All that French elegance. 

Dandy in purple velvet

An oversized French 4th plate daguerreotype of a dandy. 

The daguerreotype comes in a black leather case with a beatifull purple liner. 

The image can be taken ook of the case and put upright. 

Good quality image in a 

grand case. Very pretty.


English daguerreotypes 

Girl with golden chain

A 9th plate English daguerreotype of a young girl with a long golden chain.
In a full case.

Scotish couple

Two 6th plate Scotish daguerreotypes of a couple. 
Wonderful pose and lighting. 
 Both are in a good condition full case with the makers mark in gold on the back. Ross and Thomson, Edinburgh. 
These are top quality makers as can be seen from the images but also their appointment to the queen. 

Ambrotypes 

A weekend in the country

An English quarter plate ambrotype of a family.
 Nice early ambrotype, probably 1850's, taken in front of their house.
 These early outdoor ambrotypes are getting harder to find all the time. 
Housed in a good quality full case. 

™ Cabaret of Spirits Atelier

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Advertisement of J. Déiré England’s dry plates, 1884

19th Century Aesthetics

Collodion is to photography what watercolor is to painting -- fast, yet requiring exquisite manipulation. Each step of the process requires dexterity and quick decisions based on observation. While this presents certain challenges it also offers a very satisfying experience for the visual artist. The experience is seductive, but results are what matter. Artists are drawn to collodion for the combined effect of long exposure, ultra fine silver particles, limited color sensitivity and unlimited opportunities to celebrate the evidence of a hand-made object. Most practitioners, however, have yet to discover that this process offers even more...



In addition to the tactile and visual qualities inherent in making collodion images, artists and photographers are drawn to the process for two reasons, which appear to be completely opposing sensibilities. Many artists are initially seduced by the streaks, swirls and markings inherent in the process. Whether produced intentionally or by indelicate handling, these honest artifacts can contribute to the image in a way that is often copied, but impossible to achieve by any other means. In rare cases, these artifacts can be found in 19th c. examples, (as seen in previous image, W.M. Rossetti, 1865, by Julia Margaret Cameron); though more often they are visible in contemporary work.

There is a dark side, however; a little goes a long way. Like all visual arts, technique is not the art and the flaws of any processes, no matter how interesting, are usually secondary to the artistic concept. Sometimes they are intentional, in many cases they are the residues left by those who have not yet mastered the process.

There is a dark side, however; a little goes a long way. Like all visual arts, technique is not the art and the flaws of any processes, no matter how interesting, are usually secondary to the artistic concept. Sometimes they are intentional, in many cases they are the residues left by those who have not yet mastered the process.

Less realized today are the more subtle aspects of the collodion process. In the hands of the skillful, collodion is not a primitive product, but a sophisticated film without compromise. It is as primitive or as sophisticated as the skills of the maker. Virtually grainless images can be made on glass, which are finer and far superior to any other negative process, old or new.

Were that not enough, collodion is also extremely versatile. Variants of the wet-plate process can be used to make one-of-a-kind positives on blackened metal, called "tintypes," or on glass, called "ambrotypes." Other collodion positives on glass are transparencies (or slides), milk glass positives and orotones, all of which are second-generation images made from negatives.
A wide variety of supports can be used, such as colored and white glass, gold backings, and even thin sheets of mica. Dry pigments can be applied combined with burnishing or polishing the silver particles, adding yet another dimension to the image. It seems the uses for collodion are only limited by the imagination.


private collection

BEN CAUCHI opening image
"Dead Arm"
2006
Tintype
355 x 275 mm
Private Collection

Potato Flour

The autochrome is the rarest, the most fragile and, to a great many eyes, the most beautiful of photographic processes. It represents not just the birth of color photography but color as luminous as the camera ever caught it.

The Autochrome, invented by Louis and Auguste Lumière and patented in 1904 is an additive color screen plate process and was the first commercially viable color photographic process. The Lumières introduced the Autochrome process to the world on June 10, 1907 and it became popular amongst amateur and professional photographers from 1907-1930’s. The Lumières built upon years of experimentation starting with James Clerk Maxwell’s 1861 additive color synthesis process. Maxwell’s process involved using three separate lantern glass slides, individual red, green and blue filters to both take the image with and project through and three separate yet superimposed lantern slide projectors to produce a color image.The Autochrome, as we will see, simplified the process of color photography.



Alfred Stieglitz, founder of the Photo-Secession, was at the Photo Club de Paris introduction of the Autochrome process given by Auguste and Louis Lumiere and introduced the process to America. On November 15, 1907 the Autochrome process became available to amateur and professional photographers in America. By 1913, the Lumière factory was producing 6,000 Autochrome plates a day and kept manufacturing them until 1932.

According to a 1916 Photo-era magazine, R.J. Fitzsimons was the sole American agent based in New York City for the Lumière’s Autochrome process.
The popularity of the Autochrome was exhibited in the pages of National Geographic beginning in 1914 and continued until the advent of Kodachrome slide film in 1935. Between 1914 and 1935 National Geographic photographers took an estimated 12,000 Autochromes. In addition, French banker and philanthropist, Albert Kahn, sent a group of photographers to Autochrome the world, documenting among other things, World War 1 and the collapse of the Ottoman empires. Kahn’s endeavor resulted in 72,000 Autochromes, most of which have not been published and are housed at the Albert Kahn Museum in Paris.

"In order to give some context to the affordability to amateur photographers using the Autochrome process I looked at the 1930 publication, Color Photography with Autochrome Plate. A box of four 4 x 5 inch Autochrome plates cost $2.28., cover glass per dozen costs $.50, a Diascope viewer, $5.25 for a total of $8.03. In 2010 dollars these materials would cost $100.66. These costs do not include any chemicals or other processing supplies the photographer would need. The average yearly family income for American workers in 1930 was approximately $1,524 with expenditures of $1,512. Average family income of 1930 translates to approximately $19,104.69 in 2010 dollars and in 1935 the average hourly wage in manufacturing was $.58. This translates to $9.27 per hour in 2010. In 2010 dollars, a photographer’s $100 investment into basic Autochrome material would be equal to $1,253.58 today. As one can see, making Autochromes was expensive and out of the reach of most workers".

The Autochrome manufacturing process was quite elaborate. At the factory in Lyon, France, the first step involved running transparent potato starch grains through numerous sieves in order to sort out those that had a diameter between ten and fifteen millimeters. A slightly concave piece of glass was coated with a mixture of crude pine sap and beeswax and, a “…mosaic of microscopic grains of potato starch” is laid on the glass plate with the space between the grains filled in by spreading the plate with charcoal powder. Lastly a panchromatic silver halide emulsion is applied. As mentioned above the potato starch grains are dyed red, green and blue-violet and act as the color filters. To get a sense of the size of the grain, it took approximately four million grains to coat one square inch of the plate. In order to improve the quality of the final image, a roller with a pressure of 5 tons per square centimeter was used to flatten and evenly spread the grains out.

After careful composition, the photographer placed a yellow-orange screen on the lens; loaded the Autochrome plate into the camera with the glass side toward the lens. By placing the plate in this manner, light is filtered through the filter screen which is comprised of all those dyed potato starches, to the panchromatic emulsion. Due to the slowness of the Autochrome emulsion, the photographer needed a tripod and was restricted to shooting out of doors on sunny days. Flash powder was also used by photographers to shorten their exposure times but this, like much of the Autochrome taking process took some experimenting. Once exposed, the photographer processed the plate as a slide. This complex, multi-step process involves first developing the plate to a negative image and then back to a positive image. Once the Autochrome is fully processed, the photographer could place the plate in a Diascope viewer which would allow transmitted light to reveal the image and to also protect the image from extended periods of time exposed to the light. Otherwise, the only other ways to view the image was by holding it up to the light or projecting it.

The result of the photographer’s endeavor was a luminous, dream like quality that had not been seen before in photography prior to the advent of the Autochrome.