Figure 1.--This unidentified child, we think a boy, had his portrait taken in 1902. We think he is English, but are having trouble reading the photographer's information. Note the grey card with silver lettering. That was a popular combination at the turn of the 20th century. A British reader thinks it may be "Station Road, Sheffield". Perhaps, but I seem to see a "w." at the end. The only common place name with a final W ends in "dew". Another reader suggests it might be Shaftsbury.

It would be Talbot's process which used a negative that would until the digital age be the basis for modern photography. Talbot worked to improved his process in the 1840s. Frederick Scott Archer (1813-57) in England invented the photographic collodion process which preceded the modern gelatin emulsion. The initial result ambrotype which used this process. This esentially ended the commercial potential of the calotype. Professional studios quickly adopted the collodion process. Interestingly, upperclass amateurs, often from the landed gentry, continued to dable with caloptypes. Thus many of these images are scenes of the countryside, but rarely of the rising industrial cities. The first commercial negative process was the albumen print. This began with the carte-de-viste (CDV) which first appeared in France during the late 1850s. The CDV was hugely popular in England by the 1860s and continued to be the principal commercial photographic portrait in the 1870s and 80s. We begin to see more cabinent cards by the 1880s which by the turn of the 20th century had become the principal portrait type. And silver-nitrate prints both for amateur snapshots and studio portraits replaced albumen ptints. While English researchers had played an important role in the development of black and white photography, the development of color photography in the 20th century was led primarily by American and Germn companies.

Created: 4:46 AM 10/8/2008
Last updated: 8:07 AM 10/8/2008