#saltedprint
Salted paper print was an early negative/positive printing process developed by William Henry Fox Talbot in England in 1839. Many beautiful examples of this process were created in the 19th century and can be found in a variety of photograph collections.
Harvard’s Weissman Preservation Center (WPC) undertook Salt Print Initiative at Harvard, a university-wide project to preserve and enhance access to salt prints at Harvard. The project focused on photogenic drawings, paper negatives, and salted paper prints (positive prints created from paper or glass-plate negatives) found throughout Harvard’s libraries, archives, and museums. The Fine Arts Library holds many salted prints in our special collections.
You can learn more about Salt Print Initiative at Harvard on https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/saltprintsatharvard
May is National Photography Month! The Fine Arts Library holds more than 150,000 photographs and slides documenting Islamic art and architecture, as well as ethnographic views that provide cultural context.
Middle East and Islamic Photographs Collections are strong in albumen silver prints produced by commercial studios in the second half of the 19th century. These images are complemented by the photographic output of the first generation of scholars of Islamic art history, such as K.A.C. Creswell and Ernst Herzfeld, taken with documentary intent.
Most prominent is the Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archives. Developed at the Semitic Museum between 1891 and 1992 and transferred to the Fine Arts Library in 1995, the archive includes more than 38,000 images in a variety of formats.
Turkey, Contantinople. Mosque of Santa Sophia.
Robertson, James, 1813-1888, English [photographer]
Albumenized salt print: Istanbul, Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofia Camii)
10” x 12”, 25.5 x 30.6 cm
salted paper prints
photographs
Repository: Harvard Fine Arts Library, Special Collections
1851-1853
HOLLIS number: olvwork365432