albumen

Introduction:

Albumen in the whites of eggs is why this printing process is often called an Albumen Print.  The albumen binds the salt added to the page in application.  This can be done ahead of time to create a nicely coated, glossy surface.  Because it could be done in advance and last indefinitely, this became one of the first commercially available paper for doing prints. 

The invention of the albumen printing out process is credited to Louis Desire Blanquart-Evrard, however a letter from someone not known by anything more than H.L. had used egg whites and water in printing in 1839.  He experimented with Niepce’s albumen on glass which created a negative. 

The creation of the albumen printing out process came around the same times as the collodion process for glass negatives.  It was if they were meant for each other as a negative placed over the sensitized paper would provide a positive on the paper.

The salted egg whites process became popular because of its nice positive images.  The ability to create the papers so they could last allowed them to be produced commercially by many companies from American and European countries.  Dyes for the papers were introduced as well to give a tint to the final paper and used primarily for portraits, however as dyes fade with exposure to light it is hard to tell which papers had once been dyed nowadays. 

Albumen printing papers dominated the photography industry from the invention of the collodion glass plate process by Fredrick Scott Archer.  Even when the negative process turned from wet plates to dry, the albumen printing papers had already established itself.  It remained popular for forty years until emulsion-type gelatin and collodion printing-out papers captured the market.

Process:

To make an albumen print, you must first coat the paper with albumen and to do that you must make the albumen mixture. 

Take fresh eggs (one large egg makes about one ounce of albumen) and separate it from its yolk.  It is important to only use the egg whites without any hint of yolk or stringy-ness that can also appear.  It is also suggested that you separate each egg over a separate bowl, as one would in cooking, to avoid contaminating the entire batch with a bad egg.  Once the egg whites are separated, chlorides need to be added and this mostly salt (sodium chloride) or ammonium chloride.  There should be about 2.5% chloride composition to the egg whites. 

The chlorides are the most important thing in the photosensitivity of the paper.  The chlorides bond with the silver making a photosensitive compound which darkens when exposed to light. Forgetting or not putting enough chlorides in the mixture will weaken you’re photos.  Dissolve the chlorides in the minimum amount of water and add to egg whites.    

Next, beat the eggs into a froth.  We combined our eggs in a bowl and then shook it until it was frothy.  This breaks down some aspects of the eggs and further denaturing will take place as it sits and ages a few days (suggested a week) – do so in a refrigerator so the eggs don’t go bad.  This is necessary before application to the paper.  After it has had a few days to age it needs to be strained to remove the bubbles.  You can do this with muslin or cheese cloth.  Bubbles transferred to the paper on which the print will be made will create distortions and flaking so it is important that there are no bubbles in the mixture. 

Once the mixtures is strained, removing the bubbles, place the albumen in a flat bottom dish, preferably one that can handle the size of the paper to be coated.  Remember to avoid bubbles at all costs.  There should be about 2/3 depth to the albumen solution.

The paper to be used for printing should be coated on one side.  It is messy when there is albumen on both sides of the paper so be sure to keep in on one side.  Making a sort of boat by bending up the edges you can float the surface of the paper in the egg whites without getting any on the back.  It is important to cover the entire page smoothly.  Float the papers for about a minute. 

Once it is coated, take it from the albumen and hang it to dry.  A hotter room temp. will allow the papers to dry faster and glossier.

A second coat can be applied but isn’t necessary.  It will only allow for a glossier surface on which the print is fixed to. When drying the second coat, be sure to turn it and hang it from the other end that was originally used so that the coat is smooth.  Multiple coats will alter the depth of the image and their brilliance, but it will also affect the toning and fixing process as it will be more difficult to fix with the thicker coats. 

 In order to do a second coat, float the single coated albumen sheet in a 70% isopropyl alcohol mixture and then dry.  To prevent the chlorides from leaching from the paper it is important to put in the percentage of chlorides that was in the albumen so 2.5%.  The alcohol will harden the albumen surface so that another albumen coat can be applied.  Repeat the albumen applying method for the first coat of albumen.  Hang dry. 

There are other ways of hardening the albumen, but the alcohol method was the one we used in our experiment.  You can also hold the paper over a continuous stream of steam.  The heat will cook the surface of the paper and thus harden it. 

It is important to understand that while the double coat will make a thinner negative work better, it is also going to be more brittle and less flexible and a single coat.  So care needs to be taken with these images. 

If you don’t use all of your albumen mixture it can be saved for a few weeks.  You’ll be able to tell when it goes bad by the way it smells, color and sedimentation.

Once the albumen layer is prepared a silver concentration can be applied to the surface.  The silver nitrate solution is the same solution used in previous experimentation, see salted paper experiment.  The preferred solution concentration is 12%.  Allow solution to dry in dark area as the silver chloride formed with the addition of the silver nitrate is photosensitive.  In previous techniques, the application of silver was through a floating process as well, but we simply brush the silver solution across the page which prevents the possibility of air bubbles and lack of silver in some places. 

It can be noted that in the past, the 19^th century when albumen prints were all the rage, that ammonia fuming took place.  A dish of ammonia would be placed in a box in which the sensitized pages were hung and left for five to ten minutes.  This process was to supposed to increase the sensitivity and the brilliance of the prints, and while it does increase these features, it is not required to get a good print. This primarily took place in the United States, not Europe. 

A negative, either digital (see Making Digital Negatives blog entry) or traditionally collodion glass negative is then placed over the albumen paper and exposed to the sun or UV light source.  The UV light will darken the silver in the exposed places.  It is best to use the sensitized papers as soon as possible.

After exposure the paper needs to be fixed.  Without fixing the image will darken until the image is gone. 

The colors formed will be a rich purple to dark brown.  Fixing the image is the same for a silver process (see Salted Paper entry for fixing methods). 

The exposed pages can also be toned, though we did not tone our images.  A gold or platinum toning bath can take place.  Black tones were achieved with gold toning, but wasn’t very popular in the 19^th century.  More information on albumen can be found here and is where most information was taken for this blog. 

  

My experience: 

When doing this lab we didn’t quite know what we were doing and ran into many difficulties.  From cracking the eggs and getting shells in it and even bursting some of the yolks to not fully understanding the hardening process on the day of the lab.  Some of the difficulties we encountered in particular was bubbling of the albumen which then left foamy parts on the images.  The images could not print on those foamy parts and tended to flake off once dried (after exposure, fixing, etc.).  It is very important that there are no bubbles on the papers. 

Also, the second coat came with some difficulty.  We did not understand the use of the alcohol and thought that the second coat was to be applied and then the alcohol bath.  So for the second coat on two of our papers was done without alcohol.  We did not apply alcohol after as we had caught our mistake.  The remained of the coats were done in the correct manner and left to dry. 

We did not use a hair dryer to dry our pages at first as we thought air drying was better.  But as time became restricting we broke out the hair dryer and used it.  It may have made it so that our second coats, the ones that did not have the alcohol to harden them, actually come out right as the direct heat would have had a similar effect to the steaming process.  In any case, though we had issues, the second coats did come out glossier. 

We went into this lab without a full understanding of what we were supposed to do and that was wrong.  It was a little more complicated and we were very busy than with other labs beforehand.  While we were also coating albumen sheets, we made up gelatin and arrowroot coatings for other papers.  We had four papers for each person and five people in our group so that we were rushed on time.  We did not even do our printing on this day, but instead only prepared our pages, the albumen being prepared during class time a few days prior. 

More time, full understanding, and better organization would have made this process easier.  The images we created were not the best as most albumen prints had issues with bubbles.  However, they did have a nice clarity, depth, and detail as well as gloss which salted paper did not have.  I also enjoyed the nice tones of purplish browns that came with the process.  It was my favorite over the gelatin and the arrowroot. 

More information:

This video provides a nice animated step by step guide to the albumen printing procedure, though the writing is in a different language there are English subtitles along the bottom, but there isn’t much as far as that in the first place. 

For some more information on glass albumen photography and the chemistry behind it presented from a 19^th century manual see: Orr's Circle of the Sciences: Practical chemistry By William Somerville Orr

Photographic news from the time period can be seen here: The Photographic news: a weekly record of the progress of photography, Volume 10

According to another book of the 19^th century, it has information on photographic processes, some of which has never been printed before (at the time), which can be viewed here if one wished to a comparison of then and now:  Humphrey's journal of the daguerreotype and photographic arts and ..., Volume 13

If you’d like to see a video of an albumen print from a collodion glass negative: '

For some brief information on the collodion process a video and wiki:

Overall, the albumen process makes nice photos but the steps to preparing the papers is a bit messy.  I’d much prefer having to purchase premade albumen sheets instead of making them with icky egg and shaking till frothy and then application and drying… it really doesn’t smell that pleasant (not that it stinks, I just don’t like egg smell, or anything raw really).  Of course that is probably just a personal opinion. 

It’d be interesting to attempt a glass albumen negative as another student did in class.  If I experimented in albumen again I would be sure to eliminate bubbles from the mixture as it was really disappointing to see them scar my image.  A second trial would be better than the first purely because I now fully understand what I’m doing with the process. Trial and error is how the scientists did it, so I guess it’s good enough for me too ;)