Albumen

Alexander Gardner. Abraham Lincoln, April, 1865. Albumen Print

Albumen printing rapidly grew in popularity from its invention in 1850 until the turn of the century. Its acceptance was due to the greater amount of detail and clarity. This is “because the image resided in the compact layer of albumen on the print surface, instead of deep within the fibers of the paper.” (Reilly) Dictionary.com defines albumen as “egg white, or the protein contained in it.” Louis Desire Blanquart-Evrard developed this method to use egg whites as a binding layer to increase photographic clarity. He published his findings in the bulletin of the French Academy of Sciences in 1850. The success of this process is partly due to the collodion wet plate negative. These superior negatives have a high density range and fine detail. Collodion wet plate process required a printing process that could complement the high quality negative, and albumen was a perfect match.

Links:

http://albumen.conservation-us.org/library/c20/reilly1980.html

http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/albumen/albumen-printing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgLFsU2kvG0

To create an albumen print you must start by separating the egg yolk from the egg white, 500 ml of egg white is a good amount. When this is done mix your egg whites with 3 ml of vinegar and 7.5 g of sodium chloride. Strain the albumen mixture through a cheese cloth into a dish for coating. To coat the paper you will simply float it in the albumen bath. To avoid curling bend the edges up the paper upward to creat a boat, allowing only one side of the paper to touch the albumen, this also prevents an undesirable print-through effect of having albumen on both sides of the paper. Watch out for bubbles, they can be scraped away with a toothpick. Hang the paper up to dry. To apply a double coat you must dip the papers in an alcohol bath in-between coating.

My albumen prints suffer from some streaking, due to the runoff of hang drying. There is also evidence of bubbles damaging the image. My single coating prints turned out better than the double coating. I found that the double-coated albumen paper requires a double coat of silver nitrate to form a strong image. My images co

uld benefit from stronger negatives; one reason that albumen prints of the past look so strong is because of the glass negatives. Below are my results.

This process opened up the world of photography to depict all kinds of new scenes. Daily life was being documented more as well as major events, such as the civil war. Good prints could be created to keep record of objects and events of the time. The civil war was the first major event in United States history that was well documented photographically.

Timothy O’Sullivan. A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July, 1863. Albumen Print