Salt Print
The earliest paper photograph.
Henry Fox Talbot's process: paper soaked in salt, brushed with silver nitrate, exposed under a paper negative.
Paper is soaked in salt water, brushed with silver, then exposed to sunlight under a negative.
- ▸Salt and silver react to make a light-sensitive layer.
- ▸Sun darkens the silver where light hits — giving warm purple-brown tones.
- ▸One of the very first photo printing methods, from the 1830s.
History
Talbot announced his salted paper process in 1839, the first photographic technique to produce both a negative and unlimited positives on paper. It dominated portraiture until the albumen print eclipsed it in the 1850s.
Process
- 01
Float paper in a salt solution; dry.
- 02
Brush with silver nitrate under safelight to form silver chloride.
- 03
Contact-print under a negative in sunlight until the image appears.
- 04
Wash, tone in gold chloride, fix in hypo.
- 05
Final image sits in the paper fibres, with no surface coating.
Strengths
- +Soft, painterly tones
- +Image is matte and embedded
- +Archival when toned
Limitations
- −Slow exposures
- −Light-sensitive chemistry
- −Costly silver
Sources & citations
References for the history and process described above.
- 01William Henry Fox Talbot — Salted Paper Prints — The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- 02Salt and Silver: Early Photography 1840–1860 — Tate Britain