Making albumen paper - Maximilian Zeitler

In the 1850ies, the french photographer Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard developed a new printing method based on silverchlorides: the albumen paper process. Here is a short summary about making albumen paper. This is just a brief step by step introduction pf this process.

This paper was extremely popular up to the early 1900s because the beauty is undeniable. The industrial center of the production of Albumen paper was in Dresden, where 6 Million eggs were used per year to manufacture albumen paper. Having no opportunity to buy albumen paper, I had to dig into the books to make my own paper – here is a short description.

Step 1: Preparing the Egg Whites

First you need to carefully separate egg whites from the yolk, add salt (ammonium chloride) & some glacial acid. After this, the egg whites are beaten to a stir froth and need to set over night, filtered and the Albumen is ready for coating. Egg whites are the base for making albumen paper.

Making Albumen Paper, Berlin, Collodion, Maximilian Zeitler, Wetplate

Step 2: Coating the Paper

Paper needs to be coated using the “Floating-Method“ so fill up a clean tray with your albumen solution. Then float the paper for three minutes on the solution and hang it to dry.

Optional: making double coated albumen paper

To get a better and more even gloss, you can double coat the paper. First, you need to harden the albumen on the paper with a 70% alcohol solution for a few seconds by immersion or spraying, then dry and repeat step 2.

Step 3: Sensitizing the paper

Silverchlorides are formed by the combination of silver nitrate and ammonium or sodium chloride. In a dimmed environment, the paper can be sensitized by using a rod or a clean brush. Try to find your own favorite technique that works for you. By the way, the older the paper, the better this step works.

Step 4: Exposure to Sunlight or UV

Now comes the best part: when the paper is dry, place your negative in a printing frame and expose it to sunlight or a UV light source. You can control the contrast of the final print if you change the light. Direct sunlight lowers the contrast, printing in the shade increases the contrast. This means, if you have a weak negative with not much contrast, print long in the shade.

Print until the shades are bronzing and the print looks about 2 steps overexposed.

Step 5: Processing and toning

After exposure, remove the print from the frame and process it in salted water, maybe tone the print to change the color from reddish to cooler tones and fix with a solution of sodium thiosulfate.

When dry and everything worked, you’ll have a beautiful handmade print with details that you haven’t seen before.

Questions?

If you have questions, feel free to write me a message. If you want to learn how to do this in a workshop: I am happy to give courses on this topic.