By Carl Weese and Mike Johnston
Experiments indicate the light sensitivity of platinum. Ferdinand Gehlen finds that under the influence of light, a solution of platinum chloride turns yellow and eventually precipitates out metallic platinum.
Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner, in Germany, looking for greater light sensitivity, tries a variety of platinum compounds. He discovers the combination of potassium chloroplatinite and ferric oxalate that will become the standard combination of chemicals for light sensitive platinum solutions.
English polymath Sir John Herschel, who also discovered fixer and first applied the term "snapshot" to photography, finds several light sensitive platinum solutions. He detects that photosensitivity is confined to the violet end of the spectrum.
Robert Hunt succeeds in making platinum photographic prints, but can't make them permanent.
Frustrated in their attempts to find a permanent printing process using platinum, several researchers concentrate on finding a way to use platinum for toning to increase the permanence of silver images. M. de Carranza, in France, first publishes a formula for platinum toning of photographs. Toning formulas are developed for salted paper, albumen, and gelatin.
William Willis obtains the first patent for a platinotype process. Willis finds that the use of potassium oxalate results in predictable image formation in platinum.
1880–1914: The High Period
In 1880, the enduring platinotype process is born. In his third patent related to making photographs from platinum, William Willis introduces the "hot bath" method where a mixture of ferric oxalate and potassium chloroplatinite are coated onto paper which is then exposed through a negative and developed in a warm solution of potassium oxalate. This method has been used ever since.
Captain Giuseppe Pizzighelli patents a platinum Printing Out Paper (POP) process which uses a double salt—sodium ferric oxalate—in the sensitizing solution along with the potassium chloroplatinite, resulting in an image that forms completely on exposure to light without need for liquid development. It is marketed as the Pizzitype. Consistency problems in manufacture spell its demise despite a flurry of enthusiasm from photographers.
Willis forms the Platinotype Company to market his inventions and begins to produce and sell "cold development” paper to the public. ("Cold" in this case meant room temperature.)
Of 382 prints exhibited at the annual show of the Photographic Society in London, 175 are platinotypes.
The Platinotype Company’s products are marketed in the United States and Europe. Competitors begin to offer platinum papers. Platinum becomes one of the primary printing media in the fine art photography and Pictorialist movements, favored by members of The Linked Ring in Britain, the Secession in Vienna, and Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession in the United States. Emerson in Britain and Stieglitz in America both declare gravure and platinum to be the only two processes suitable for artistic photography. The Platinotype is favored by proponents of "straight" or unmanipulated photography; advocates of extensive hand manipulation of photographic images begin to favor the gum bichromate process. The silver papers that will later become standard for black-and-white photography are perceived as appropriate mainly for commercial and professional purposes.
Eastman Kodak Co. brings platinum papers to market for the first time.
The Platinotype Company is offering 15 different styles of platinum paper while Kodak offers an even greater array of emulsion colors and surface textures and weights. Platinum printing is still the perceived high point of photographic procedures, but is rapidly losing ground to high-speed "gaslight" silver chlorobromide enlarging papers. Platinum is becoming increasingly expensive.
The First World War cuts off supplies of platinum, most of which is mined in Russia.
The Platinotype Company introduces a palladium based paper to compensate for the increasingly prohibitive cost of platinum.
Kodak ceases production of platinum papers.
The Platinotype Company ceases importing paper to the United States. Several important photographers including Paul Strand, Laura Gilpin, and Edward Weston continue to use privately imported materials. Platinum is nearly unobtainable in wartime Europe.
In England, Frederick Evans—whom George Bernard Shaw called "the ideal bookseller"—quits photography altogether when commercial Platinotype papers become unavailable. He is still known today as one of the greatest platinum printers in the history of photography.
1920s—1960s: The Interregnum
Platinum printing falls into neglect. Scattered devotees continue to work with platinum by hand mixing and coating; but the platinotype and its derivatives have become anachronistic, a part of history.
In the 1930s, Paul Anderson develops the current two-solution, drop-counting, ferric oxalate method of hand coating papers for platinum printing. He publishes instructional articles in various photography journals. A few magazine articles give evidence that a small but dedicated coterie of workers were making platinum prints with Anderson’s method through the 1960s, but largely in obscurity.
1970s: The Revival
During a general period of explosive growth and advancement known now as The Photo Boom, platinum printing is rediscovered as an innovative fine-art method by a number of adventurous photographers.
• George Tice begins working in platinum; publishes The Lost Art of Platinum Printing, in 1970; and demonstrates platinum printing in the widely disseminated Life Library of Photography volume Caring for Photographs, 1972.
• Irving Penn exhibits handmade platinum prints. The great degree of attention he gets from a mainstream media newly infatuated with photography seems equally divided between interest in his images and in the platinum printing process he employs.
• In Wilmington, Delaware, Alan Goodman founds Elegant Images, a company devoted to supplying Pt/Pd printing materials to photographers.
• Arnold Gassan publishes Handbook of Contemporary Photography, which dedicates a chapter to the handmade platinum print.
• Steve Szabo publishes The Eastern Shore, printed from 8x10" platinum prints.
• Nancy Rexroth publishes an instruction booklet on palladium and platinum printing called The Platinotype 1977 that becomes an underground best seller.
• In 1979, RIT publishes The Platinum Print by John Hafey and Tom Shillea, with duotone reproductions by 21 photographers working in the revived platinum process.
• William Crawford, also in 1979, publishes The Keepers of Light, soon to become a bible of alternative processes for artists and hobbyists, which contains a major treatment of platinum printing.
By the end of the decade, platinum had regained a place as the "Rolls-Royce" of fine printing techniques. It makes exquisite original fine-art objects with great presence; its main drawback is that its qualities are difficult to reproduce well on the printed page (except in photogravure, which is also rare).
Louis Nadeau publishes The History and Practice of Platinum Printing (revised 1986, 1994), which combines historical information, including original patents, with working instructions for modern practitioners.
Photographer Rob Steinberg and his wife Sura form the Palladio Company to manufacture and market machine-coated platinum paper—the first commercially marketed platinum-palladium paper after a 50-year absence from the market. Surprisingly, hand-coaters are resistant to the new product—they don't want to share their "guild secrets" with anyone who can buy product off a shelf! Palladio suffers recurring problems with paper procurement*; the official reason for Palladio's eventual demise was that it was absorbing too much of Rob and Sura's time.
Today, platinum printing is firmly established among a small but dedicated group of craft practitioners, and is highly prized among galleries and collectors. It's difficult to say with certainty, but interest in the process seems to have been hardly affected at all by the rise of digital—it's possible that the prestige of the process, which was already very high, has even been enhanced.
Carl and Mike*Sura explained to me (MJ) that some of the properties important to platinum/palladium coating were not even qualities that paper mills controlled for, or allowed clients to specify.
Note: Carl's platinum / digital print sale—TOP's first-ever offering of prints made with this technique—starts at noon this coming Sunday. Please check back then for details. —MJ
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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Bill Mitchell: "For 50 years, until George Tice took up the baton, platinum printing was virtually kept alive in the U.S. by Laura Gilpin."
Featured Comment by Rod S.: "In recent years I've seen several beautiful platinum-palladium prints by Gordon Undy at Sydney's Point Light gallery, so this introduction was interesting and helps me appreciate them further. Thank you.
"My professional goal as an exploration geologist is the discovery of metal ores, so I find it fascinating to read that the limited supply of [native] platinum dug from [alluvial deposits] in Russia at first enabled and, later, nearly wiped out this art form. Now, most platinum and palladium comes from platinum arsenide and platinum sulfide, present at almost trace amounts (0.5 ppm, according to Wikipedia) in large tonnage nickel-copper sulfide deposits at the Merensky Reef, South Africa, at Norilsk in Russia and at Sudbury, Ontario, ensuring a consistent supply."