A Short List of Historical Processes

Since the advent of photography, several photographic processes were employed. Today, we have just a few of those original printing processes remaining in regular usage: Silver Gelatin (also know as Black & White), Platinum/Palladium, and a few limited processes make up the balance of work in the photographic field. There are indeed several other processes which are much less used, due to the costs involved (dye color seperators, for example), or the dangers (carbon arc lamps used for platinum/palladium, certain chemicals used in various processes). However, since the 1970's, there has been a resurgence in the use of the "historical processes" and their techniques. For our purposes, we will limit the definition of "Historical" processes to mean those which use UV light as the source for exposing sensitized materials. Some of these are: Carbon, Van Dyke, Cyanotype, Salted Paper, Gum Bichromate, Platinum/Palladium, Hand-Colored Prints. There are many other time-honored techniques used, including the original photographic process, the Daguerrotype. However, due to the expense and/or danger of most of these processes, very few people today attempt to produce prints through those methods.

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