The considerations offered in this analysis of the conditions required for the conservation of early photographs will help inform difficult ethical decision-making by curators faced with the conflicting obligations of access and conservation, and will also be of interest to photohistorians, conservators and collectors.

A resource for the photographic conservator, conservation scientist, curator, as well as professional collector, this volume synthesizes both the masses of research that has been completed to date and the international standards that have been established on the subject.

In Camera Geologica Siobhan Angus tells the history of photography through the minerals upon which the medium depends. Challenging the emphasis on immateriality in discourses on photography, Angus focuses on the inextricable links between image-making and resource extraction, revealing how the mining of bitumen, silver, platinum, iron, uranium, and rare earth elements is a precondition of photography. Photography, Angus contends, begins underground and, in photographs of mines and mining, frequently returns there. Through a materials-driven analysis of visual culture, she illustrates histories of colonization, labor, and environmental degradation to expose the ways in which photography is enmeshed within and enables global extractive capitalism. Angus places nineteenth-century photography in dialogue with digital photography and its own entangled economies of extraction, demonstrating the importance of understanding photography’s complicity in the economic, geopolitical, and social systems that order the world.

Salted Paper Printing: A Step-by-Step Manual Highlighting Contemporary Artists makes one of the oldest known photographic processes easy for the 21st century using simple digital negative methods. Christina Z. Anderson’s in-depth discussion begins with a history of salted paper printing, then covers the salted paper process from beginner to intermediate level, with step-by-step instructions and an illustrated troubleshooting guide. Including cameraless imagery, hand-coloring, salt in combination with gum, and printing on fabric, Salted Paper Printing contextualizes the practice within the varied alternative processes. Anderson offers richly-illustrated profiles of contemporary artists making salted paper prints, discussing their creative process and methods. Salted Paper Printing is perfect for the seasoned photographer looking to dip their toe into alternative processes, or for the photography student eager to engage with photography’s rich history.

The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of world photography up to the beginning of the twentieth century. It sets out to be the standard, definitive reference work on the subject for years to come. Its coverage is global – an important ‘first’ in that authorities from all over the world have contributed their expertise and scholarship towards making this a truly comprehensive publication. The Encyclopedia presents new and ground-breaking research alongside accounts of the major established figures in the nineteenth century arena. Coverage includes all the key people, processes, equipment, movements, styles, debates and groupings which helped photography develop from being ‘a solution in search of a problem’ when first invented, to the essential communication tool, creative medium, and recorder of everyday life which it had become by the dawn of the twentieth century. The sheer breadth of coverage in the 1200 essays makes the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography an essential reference source for academics, students, researchers and libraries worldwide.

Full facsimile of two of the most important documents in the history of photography.

Painting with Fire shows how experiments with chemicals known to change visibly over the course of time transformed British pictorial arts of the long eighteenth century—and how they can alter our conceptions of photography today. As early as the 1670s, experimental philosophers at the Royal Society of London had studied the visual effects of dynamic combustibles. By the 1770s, chemical volatility became central to the ambitious paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds, premier portraitist and first president of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts. Valued by some critics for changing in time (and thus, for prompting intellectual reflection on the nature of time), Reynolds’s unstable chemistry also prompted new techniques of chemical replication among Matthew Boulton, James Watt, and other leading industrialists. In turn, those replicas of chemically decaying academic paintings were rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century and claimed as origin points in the history of photography. Tracing the long arc of chemically produced and reproduced art from the 1670s through the 1860s, the book reconsiders early photography by situating it in relationship to Reynolds’s replicated paintings and the literal engines of British industry. By following the chemicals, Painting with Fire remaps familiar stories about academic painting and pictorial experiment amid the industrialization of chemical knowledge.

The salt print is the foundation of photography. William Henry Fox Talbot, known as the of photography, discovered the salt print process in 1834. The history of Talbot is quite remarkable. His early discoveries were the foundation of numerous photographic and print processes, many still practiced today. Due to the inherent masking ability the salt print can create a greater tonal range than other photographic print processes. The challenge is to create negatives that reach this extraordinary range. The salt print offers flexibility in controlling the colour, tones and hues.

The impact of light on works of art and archival materials has long been an issue of concern to conservators and other museum professionals, yet the literature on this subject has never been systematically reviewed. This volume fills that gap by providing a survey of the impact of exposure to light with an emphasis on photoflash and reprographic sources. The information provided will assist the professional audience, especially conservators and collections managers, in assessing the risk to art and archival objects of such exposures. The text surveys relevant photophysical and photochemical principles, photometric and radiometric measurement, and the spectral outputs of several light sources. Materials discussed include colorants and natural fibers; pulp, paper, and wood; natural and synthetic polymers; fluorescent whitening agents; photographic and reprographic materials; and objects containing combinations of materials. Approximations and assumptions used in the evaluation process are discussed in some detail, with examples of the different types of calculations. The Research in Conservation reference series presents the findings of research conducted by the Getty Conservation Institute and its individual and institutional research partners, as well as state-of-the-art reviews of conservation literature. Each volume covers a topic of current interest to conservators and conservation scientists.