Mellon Collaborative Workshop Paper Negative Sample Set

Over the course of 2002-2005 and with financial support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, I investigated the five known 19th century variants or families of making paper negatives.  The goal was to create a teaching reference for photographic conservation programs by providing them with a portfolio of five sample paper negatives (each one was half waxed, half unwaxed), and five corresponding salt paper positive prints:  two variations of William Henry Fox Talbot’s original process from 1839, a Scottish simplification by William Furlong from roughly 1841, and two French adaptations by Guillot-Saguez and Gustav LeGray completed the series.

I located a building on the Bennington College campus that could be photographed repeatedly throughout the seasons, and with the same strength of daylight illumination, and from the exact same angle to complete this series.  

The resulting paper negatives and salt prints were carefully assembled in housing by Georgia Southworth and Predrag Dimitrijevic, photographic conservators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Finished bound sets were then distributed to the following photographic conservation programs:

University of Delaware, Winterthur Program
New York University, Institute of Fine Art
George Eastman House, Rochester, NY
University of Texas, Austin, TX
Buffalo State College, NY
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario Canada
Lacock Abby, UK

Many thanks to Debra Hess Norris, Henry Francis DuPont Chair of Fine Arts, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Delaware, and to Nora Kennedy, Sherman Fairchild Conservator of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  Their enthusiastic support of this project provided the endurance to prevail.