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Gelatin silver printing is now a historic process

adelorenzo

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George Eastman House has released their Photographic Processes Series, which is an awesome series of 12 videos that cover everything from daguerrotypes to digital photography. I really enjoyed them, highly recommend watching.

I found it very interesting in Episode 10, Mark Osterman says that George Eastman House now considers gelatin silver printing to be a historic process.

Also interesting in Episode 11, that unlike gelatin silver process or other historic processes that can be made and used by individual photographers, once color processes are gone, they are gone forever.

Not meaning to start a "film is dead" thread here, but I thought that this was a great series that APUG people would want to watch. Those two points in particular really stuck with me, I'd love to hear what others think.
 
As far as mainstream photography is concerned, I think they're right. Gelatin silver is still used of course, especially in the fine art world, but for commercial photography barely no one gets prints these days either way, and when they do it's inkjet, or at least from digital files.

It's interesting though, I remember reading that RA-4 sales were up recently as a result of lightjet printing, I wonder if GEH considers that process as "silver gelatin" as well, or if it sits somewhere inbetween.

once color processes are gone, they are gone forever.
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Also, autochromes don't seem that difficult to create, so what the hey, who needs portra anyway.
 
Silver gelatin black and white is an historic process from the Kodak perspective since they quit making black and white paper. Harman etc. might disagree.
 
truism noun [countable] /ˈtruːɪz(ə)m/ a statement that does not really need to be made because everyone already knows it is true
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it's a »historic process« just as much, or as little, as letterpress printing, drawing on canvas with a brush, or licking and sticking a stamp on a hand-written Christmas postcard and riding your bike to take it to the mailbox.

That said, that series looks great, thanks for sharing!
 

Flawed statement please see impossible project...


Or

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga
 
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Cybertrash said:
Also, autochromes don't seem that difficult to create, so what the hey, who needs portra anyway.
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Not that easy - no-one has actually managed to achieve a consistently high coating quality yet, even though the process only went out of production in the 1950s and some of the original machinery still exists!
 
not another adjective to describe me!!!!

As a film guy since my teens, I've been labeled "vintage" and "retro" but now in my 63rd year on the planet I am labeled "historic"!!! OMG!
Sam
 
Regarding color processes I have to disagree they might be a lot more work but one can still make a Lippman helichromy or use Miethe 3 color camera with B/W film and make a three color carbo or gum print. There was a whole world of colour processes before Autochrome and Kodachrome came along they were just easier to do. Imho a three color carbo is one of the most beautiful color processes ever beating modern color prints by a large margin. Three colour gum is another extremely beautiful process. If I remember correctly one can still make Dye Transfers as well again a beautiful process.
Gelatin Silver printing is a historic process after all it is over 100 years old. Car analogy everything over 30 years old is vintage (in German they are called Oldtimer), cars that are 60+ are called historic cars. It just means that the process had time to mature and is now a classic.
 
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Roger Cole said:
Silver gelatin black and white is an historic process from the Kodak perspective since they quit making black and white paper. Harman etc. might disagree.
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Yes. And silver gelatin printing (to me) includes chromogenic process too. Millions of prints of that process are still cranked out every day.

With all respect to GEH, they are not a holy grail. I have read erroneous statements by them before.
 
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Sorry that was my clumsy paraphrasing, that second quote was talking about chromogenic color processes. In that episode they do touch on some early color processes that people have mentioned. Basically, they are saying that in a world with no photo companies at all we'd still be able to make our own B&W emulsions from scratch to coat glass plates and printing paper, but the chemicals and processes like C-41, E-6 and RA-4 are reliant on industrial processes.
 
adelorenzo said:
once color processes are gone, they are gone forever.
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Several things strike me about this whole idea... one, someone from GEH saying this is a 'little' self-serving as if to say to everyone; 'hey, better buy it or Kodak (and by implication an entire process) will go away'

But two, and I think far more interesting; what process has been produced to create images on paper in the twenty-FIRST century that isn't some kind of improvement on ink/dye/pigment printing?

I have NOT done research on this, but it does occur to me after watching all the historic processes that we have taken to engineering improvements much more than discovering breakthroughs in this field. (If I'm missing some huge technology, please don't flame me, I'm just musing after watching these great videos!) I am just in awe of all the innovation over the 150 odd years up to chromogenic imaging that has seemed to have turned into engineering improvements in physical image creation while HUGE industries are growing around digital capture side.
 
adelorenzo said:
I found it very interesting in Episode 10, Mark Osterman says that George Eastman House now considers gelatin silver printing to be a historic process.
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I would not read into the word "historic" any meaning other than that the process has been in use for a long time. When television caught on people said it would kill radio. Yet billions of people listen to radio every day. A far greater audience than when television first started. We live in an interesting moment when the utter banality of cell phone photos has yet to reach the hoi poloi.
 
adelorenzo said:
...I'd love to hear what others think.
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I think such designations are grotesquely self-serving. And intentional so.

Each for their own reasons, I think Kodak and GEH have had long-running self-interests in killing off traditional photography. Turning it into an historic process for their own needs.

Kodak originally to turn their customer base into Kodak digital camera users (THAT didn't work out too well!). And GEH to promote their ongoing historic mission agenda in general. Their very survival requires film-related things to become historic.

They have both also been intensely narcissistic in their perception that the traditional photographic world revolves only around them. That is to say, only Kodak is "smart" enough to make film. No one else in the world can do it. And when Kodak finally chooses to shut it down for whatever reason, by definition film is then dead for everyone. So deal with it.

Roger hits the bulls-eye. Harman surely doesn't consider traditional b&w processes to be "historic". At least in the sense of being a bygone relic. And neither do any of the other companies currently working to fill the film manufacturing void left behind when Kodak made a business decision to abandon the film manufacturing space.

And as 'Ko.Fe.' so aptly points out, how "historic" can it be if it's still readily available brand new for purchase and use today?

Ken
 
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I feel old. Come to think of it, I am
 
Just another silly label to pique attention. Kinda like calling your prints as "authentic silver gelatin", which would apply to billions of prints made over the decades; or in today's parlance, "archival pigment print" when they are referring to just another damn inkjet, which is not a
true pigment process at all, and probably not that permanent anyway. Word games. ...
 

Interesting post. Maybe you could answer 2 questions.

Why is this statement self serving?

And, not doing research, how can you suggest that this has not involved breaktrhoghs in analog photography without hard evidence?

PE
 
samcomet said:
As a film guy since my teens, I've been labeled "vintage" and "retro" but now in my 63rd year on the planet I am labeled "historic"!!! OMG!
Sam
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OMG!! the funniest thing i've read in a while, hahaha!!
 
Of course it is historic - it is full of history!

That doesn't mean it is lost, or irrelevant, or entirely replaced, or worthless, or unused, or ....

Parts of the industry? They may have become irrelevant. But not the entire process.

As I understand it, GEH's display is about changes in the industry. And that industry no longer supports what it once did.
 
Here's my take. If it's "historic" means that it's history. But I bought a box of 8x10 VC FB paper from Freestyle last month. Dektol, stop bath and fix is still available.
 
adelorenzo said:
I found it very interesting in Episode 10, Mark Osterman says that George Eastman House now considers gelatin silver printing to be a historic process.
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You all are reading way too much into this. Mark's title is Process Historian and his assistant Nick's title is Historic Process Specialist. They teach 'historic processes by definition. In 2015 they will be offering two gelatin silver printing classes: Gelatin Emulsion Week: Dry Plate Negatives & “Azo” Paper and Silver Bromide Enlarging Paper
 
Photo Engineer said:
Interesting post. Maybe you could answer 2 questions.

Why is this statement self serving?

And, not doing research, how can you suggest that this has not involved breakthroughs in analog photography without hard evidence?

PE
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I'm citing a lack, to my knowledge, of 'Photograph-to-paper' innovation in the way that so many very different photographic processes were shown in that series of videos. I'm phrasing it poorly I think - what I mean to say, I see more innovation in chromogenic imaging than I see in inkjet for instance. Inkjet is a refinement of printing which is VERY old. Chromogenic refined BW halide which when it was invented was maybe a century or less old? Once again though, I am most certainly not a chemist, so my observation is very much as an outsider - the chemistry of the whole process seems magical to me in a way that printing never will.

The self serving part means that being at GEH and phrasing it that way is probably as much to do with the film division of kodak surviving as a statement of fact. I don't think I could, myself, be a part of GEH and be 'impartial' to the history of photography knowing that it could all come to a screeching halt at the very place I worked.

I had/have no intention to impugn Kodak for sure - the fact that there is even a chance of losing such technology kinda makes me sick having worked with film for so long.
 

There seems to be some confusion - the George Eastman House Museum is NOT part of the Eastman Kodak Company. None of the people working there are Kodak employees. Several volunteers helping at the GEH are Kodak retirees and two of us (Ron and me) help out in the Historic Photograph Processes area.
 
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