Julia Margaret Cameron Appreciation

[cliveh]

From my understanding of photographic history, Julia Margaret Cameron never made platinum prints, they were all albumen prints.

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[Peter Schrager]

I see something from 2003, is that the book you mean? I just downloaded if for free!

no just published...I'm on their email list..

 

[logan2z]

no just published...I'm on their email list..

Can you post a link? I don't see it on the Getty Museum Store website either.

 

[awty]

From my understanding of photographic history, Julia Margaret Cameron never made platinum prints, they were all albumen prints.

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Yes and such a wonderful process.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Most of her still extant prints were commercially made. I've personally seen platinum examples.

 

[cliveh]

Most of her still extant prints were commercially made. I've personally seen platinum examples.

But not made by her.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I don't really know. There are conflicting accounts, and I'm not in the position to do the underlying research. One biographer related that her husband, as rich as he was, was complaining about how much money she was routinely spending on platinum, in reference to her home usage. Another reference speaks of her making prints (unspecified), but then farming out the editions of these to various well-known services skilled at albumen, platinum, printing out paper, and even carbon printing. There's a void in my own limited reference materials regarding her own specific techniques.

 

[cliveh]

I don't really know. There are conflicting accounts, and I'm not in the position to do the underlying research. One biographer related that her husband, as rich as he was, was complaining about how much money she was routinely spending on platinum, in reference to her home usage. Another reference speaks of her making prints (unspecified), but then farming out the editions of these to various well-known services skilled at albumen, platinum, printing out paper, and even carbon printing. There's a void in my own limited reference materials regarding her own specific techniques.

Can you supply the source of that reference?

 

[BrianShaw]

Can you supply the source of that reference?

I suspect that there is no such reference, just recollection... which may be mistaken. If I'm wrong, I'd love to learn more than I currently know. She did not use platinum printing. Those were later prints made from copy negatives many years after her death. Coburn, about 1915. She also didn't make carbon prints as they were a collaboration with the Autotype Company. She prefered silver chloride printing over albumen, and did both. One reference speaks of Charles Cameron and refers to him repeatedly as "old Mr. Cameron". When they returned to Ceylon, he was elderly and "inwardly focused". Sure, they were broke but his interests seem to be more about having a good book, a cup of tea, and some peaceful time alone than telling his wife what she should or should't be doing. I can't imagine telling her what, or what not, to do...

 

[DREW WILEY]

I'd have to dig out the book or books, and then find the pages. But it was an updated version of Gernsheim's classic biography published by Aperture. And like I hinted, it is rather deficient in terms of researching her personal techniques. On the other hand, I certainly know what a platinum print looks like, versus printing-out silver paper, albumen, etc. I have a variety of vintage technique prints in my own collection. The prints of hers I've seen for sale were of the very highest quality, and were unquestionably platinum. It's hard to imagine her own direct input was not involved, whether due to her own hands, or else by her direct supervision of specialized technicians. That might be likened to simply kicking the ball the right direction, and then the copies followed along the same lines.

The fact she once unsuccessfully tried to deliver her leftover fixer to a location where the silver could be recovered and sold tells me she was doing a lot of silver printing herself. The problem with silver prints in that era is that all the sulphur dioxide air pollution around from burning coal quickly tarnished many of them - hence the emphasis on more stable media in urban galleries.

I'd be interested to know if there are other particularly relevant illustrated biographies of Cameron. Separating fact from folklore in cases like this need more boots on the ground.

 

[cowanw]

The Platinotype was introduced after Cameron's photographic career ended. There is no suggestion that her prints dating to her leaving England in 1875 were anything but albumin.
see
Grant B. Romer, "The Albumen Print and Cameron's Work," in Joanne Lukitsh, Cameron: Her Work and Career, 1986.
Helmut Gernsheim, Julia Margaret Cameron: Her Life and Photographic Work, New York, 1975.
Julia Margaret Cameron's women By Sylvia Wolf, with contributions by Stephanie Lipscomb, Debra N. Mancoff, and Phyllis Rose, 1998

 

[DREW WILEY]

Platinum printing was patented in 1873 and commercialized in England by 1880. Julia arranged for limited editions of her work to be made by several different companies, on different media, and it's probable that authorized copies were being made even well after her death. One would have to trace the rights to her negatives themselves.

Thanks for the additional references. I already mentioned Gernsheim. I can't justify the expense of the big folio catalog issued in conjunction with the Getty Museum show, which allegedly has a lot of technical info too. And I know darn well what an albumen print looks like, and what it doesn't. I've got a lovely one on the wall a few feet from me right now.

Early platinotype prints were made of portraits of Julia Cameron herself. Known ones include an image of her made by one of her own famous sitters, GF Watts, taken in 1852, probably under her supervision, and later printed in platinum in 1890. Then there were instances from an admirer and visitor, and noted portraitist in her own right, Eveleen Myers, printed in the early 1880's. These links in the chain might furnish clues how some of Julia's own negatives gravitated into actual platinum printing after her death.

I wasn't purchasing when I encountered distinct platinum prints of a few of Julia's own famous images, so had no reason to trace the chain of custody, if that even still existed. But they were vintage, and unquestionably not albumen prints, nor carbon, another medium some of her images have turned up in.

 

[cowanw]

To be sure, George Frederick Watts's image of Cameron was a painting and this was copied as a photogravure by, apparently, Henry Herschel Hay Cameron and J.C. Smith in 1885. That Cameron also made a platinum print of this in 1890.
There is also a cellulose negative by Alvin Langdon Coburn. this is likely one of the copy negatives that Coburn used in 1915 to make his platinum print versions of Cameron prints.
Julia Margaret Cameron complained her Albumin prints cracked so, in 1875, she had the Autotype Company make carbon prints of her most popular images. They were made from positives made of Cameron's original glass-plate negatives. Earlier she used an Art Gallery P. & D. Colnaghi to help her sell prints. Whether they actually made prints is speculation. She is recorded as sending them 460 prints. There is another reference to 260 prints. So there were a lot of prints sold (or at least recorded).
For your interest here is my copy of the carbon print by the Autotype company of "Call, I follow, I follow, Let Me Die!" .

 

[DREW WILEY]

Thanks. Lots of interesting historical leads I don't have the time or ability to trace. I'm more interested in her from an esthetic standpoint.

 

[cowanw]

This all brings to mind the different requirements of negatives for these processes. I do platinum and gelatin and watch Andrew O'Neill's videos obsessively, so I think I know some about the differences in negatives for some of these alternate processes. Can someone who does Albumin prints, Carbon prints and Platinum prints help to say whether similar images can be pulled from all these processes from the same negative?

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yes, because all of those are essentially UV exposure (or formerly sunlight) processes which favor "thick" negatives with more contrast than ideal for conventional silver printing. That much I know. For the finer points, you'd need to interact with specialty conversations about each respective process. But with respect to antique work, like that of Cameron, I'd imagine that her original plates or negatives would have worked just fine for any of those particular processes. I don't state that as a practitioner myself, but as someone who has done a fair amount of antique photo restoration, and salvaging old negatives and remastering them entirely darkroom style, prior to modern digital restoration conveniences.

Landing the scale of some of those antique negs in harmony with modern projection silver gelatin papers instead can be a bit of a challenge. But I had all the requisite skills, including masking if necessary. Or special chloride contact papers like Azo could have been used, though I rarely resorted that that myself (most of my clients wanted framed enlargements).
And for awhile, printing out papers and pre-coated albumen had a brief commercial revival, even pre-coated platinum papers. I preferred to work with conventional silver papers; but some of the classic graded ones of that time were especially nice to work with when it came to replicating a vintage feel at least, like Portriga.

 

[BrianShaw]

Several books/scholars have noted that many of her images were made from copy negatives or rephotographed prints.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Absolutely no way the superbly nuanced platinum prints I saw were made from rephotographed prints. That is always a lossy technique. High quality duplicate negs are tricky enough, especially back in the late 19th and early 20th C.

 

[BrianShaw]

I don't know what to say, Drew. I'm quite sure that you are quite sure of what you believe. I tend to believe the scholarship of V&A and Getty Museum.

Her son made a couple of platinum prints after her death. Perhaps from original or copy negatives; I've never seen any compelling information to verify either possibility. The vast majority of the platinum prints, by A. L. Coburn, date from 1915 and everything I've seen indicates copy negatives or rephotographed. But I'm not really intersted in hunting down information to counter your observations and memory. Apparently neither are you so let's both agree that our major interest is from the aesthetic viewpoint.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Someone would have to dig into Tate and Natl Brit Museum files too. I've just had a big enough headache sorting out certain incorrect statements about my own Aunt's painting in the Tate in one of her biographies. Sure, they bought it, but it never actually reached Britain due to all the Nazi U-Boat activity in the Atlantic at the time, and rather than risk that, it was returned before it ever left the shore, and has ever since been in a US museum instead.