Salted Paper Print

About

Salted papers are the first positive photographs on single-layer silver-based paper. They are produced by direct exposure to a negative.

Place du Carrousel au moment de la démolition des anciennes écuries du Roi, Henry Le Secq, 1852, bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris

Historical period of production and use

Successor to photogenic drawing, the process was invented in 1839 by William Henry Fox Talbot.

Used primarily with paper negatives, which date from the same period, salted paper was immensely successful in Europe from the 1840s to the 1860s.

Manufacturing

Preparing the printing paper requires two steps: salting and sensitizing. A sheet of cotton-fibre paper free from impurities is first salted by being dipped in a solution of sodium chloride (sea salt) and dried. A solution of silver nitrate is then brushed onto this sheet, which reacts with the salt to form photosensitive silver chloride. In 1847 Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard improved greatly the process by sensitizing the salted paper through flotation on the silver nitrate solution which results in a more uniform distribution of silver salts on the paper's surface.

Once dried, the coated sheet has to be used quickly for printing out (see notice Formation of analog and digital images). The most energetic rays of light (ultraviolet rays) transform silver chloride into liquid metallic silver, which is brownish-orange in colour. Once the image has been formed, it is fixed in a solution of sodium thiosulfate, which dissolves the residual sensitized salts, then washed. Toning, generally with gold, is performed as an intermediate step to cool the naturally orange tone of the image, giving it tones ranging from warm brown to purplish black depending on the recipe – and improve stability. From 1850, binders began to be added to the salting bath to improve paper waterproofing, allowing better contrasts and definition in the image and to obtain a wider range of tones. The most commonly added substances are albumen, gelatin or starch; giving their names to these variants, which gradually eclipsed the first plain salted paper process.

Identification

Salted paper can be recognised by its matt finish, a rough surface and an image with slightly blurred edges, through which the fibres of the base paper show through.

Deterioration

Salted papers are particularly fragile. The silver image may yellow as a result of poor fixing or insufficient washing, and it may also deteriorate due to air pollution.

Enlarged detail. ©ARCP / Mairie de Paris / Jean-Philippe Boiteux, 2014

Credits

Visual Glossary of Photographic Processes © ARCP / Mairie de Paris, 2023

Glossary