Albumen print

A photographic print made by coating paper with egg white and salt, then sensitizing it with silver nitrate. It became the dominant paper-print process in the nineteenth century.

Albumen paper: Paper coated with egg white and salt, then sensitized with silver nitrate for photographic printing. This prepared support carries the light-sensitive silver image.
Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard: A French photographer and printer who introduced the albumen paper process in 1850. His practical method made albumen printing commercially viable.
Photographic portrait: A photograph whose primary subject is a person or group of people. Studio portraits were among the most common subjects printed on albumen paper.
Salted paper print: A photographic print made by sensitizing salt-treated paper with silver nitrate, without an albumen coating. Its matte surface and softer detail contrast with albumen prints’ glossy, finely detailed images.
Silver nitrate: An inorganic silver salt that supplies silver ions for photographic sensitization and image formation. It reacts with the salted albumen layer to form light-sensitive silver compounds.
Calotype: A paper-negative photographic process patented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1841. Albumen prints often used calotype negatives before glass negatives became widespread.
Travel photography: Photography made to document or interpret places encountered during travel. Photographers used albumen prints to distribute views of distant landscapes and monuments.
Carbon print: A permanent photographic print formed from pigmented gelatin hardened by light. It resisted fading better than the silver-based albumen print.
Silver chloride: A light-sensitive silver halide formed when silver ions react with chloride ions. Exposure transforms the silver chloride in the coating into a visible image.
Wet-collodion process: A photographic process using a wet collodion-coated glass plate as a negative. Its sharp glass negatives paired especially well with albumen paper.

Linked from 12 pages