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September 29, 2008
Exhibit features Ambrotypes from the B. and H. Henisch Photo-History Collection
University Park, PA--"Ambrotypes from the B. and H. Henisch Photo-History Collection" are on display in the B. and H. Henisch Photo-History Collection Exhibition Room, 201 A Pattee Library. The exhibit features a 19th-century process called the ambrotype, properly d
escribed as a viable form of photography for about twenty years. It was cheaper and in some ways more versatile than a daguerreotype but, lacking the silvery sparkle, never quite occupied the special place in photography-lovers’ hearts that the daguerreotype had earlier won for itself. Even so, a finely made specimen can be an exquisite object, with beautiful tonal gradations, whether hand-tinted (as many were) or not.
The exhibition highlights the ambrotype holdings in the Henisch Collection, including over-painted portraits, rare outdoor scenes, and examples of the elaborate folding cases that were constructed to protect the fragile glass images. Most of these ambrotypes were made by unknown photographers who documented ordinary lives from childhood to death. The postmortem photographs on display were lovingly created as family keepsakes, and they may well have been seen as therapeutic for the original viewers, particularly after the death of a child.
Ambrotypes are made by slightly underexposing a glass-wet plate in the camera, and then placing the finished plate in front of a black background so that the image can be seen as positive. An ambrotype can almost give a tactile appearance of three-dimensional depth because of its transparent blacks.
The ambrotype is a variation of the wet collodion process, a discovery attributed to Frederick Scott Archer, who published an article in 1851 in the British journal The Chemist. The ambrotype process was patented in 1854 by James Ambrose Cutting of Boston, in the United States. Cutting used Archer’s process as a positive instead of a negative. After its heyday in the 1850s and early 1860s as a portrait medium, the ambrotype was supplanted by the tintype, wet plate negatives, and albumen papers.
The exhibition will be on display September 26 through December 30, 2008. For more information, contact Sandra Stelts, The Eberly Family Special Collections Library, 814-865-1793.