Harold Cazneaux's 1909 letter about his one-man exhibition in Sydney

23-3-1909

Comments of the “One Man Show”

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen,

Before commenting on pictures on the walls I should like to point out that my notes will not take the shape of describing the good and bad points of my pictures, that I will leave to my critics. 

My comments, therefore will be more aimed at helping our young members and those who have made a beginning in Pictorial Photography, also to those who feel that they have exhausted the possibilities of Bromide as a medium.

I shall give in some instances the reason of taking the picture, also furnishing the technical data such as the plate and lens used, the exposure and subsequent treatment of plate and print. 

At the conclusion of this short paper I will be willing to furnish to the best of my ability an answer to any question regarding the pictures on the wall before us.  Probably out of a total of about 49 prints in the Landscape seascape and genre class, only about 12 were made with the stand camera.  I need hardly add that my favourite camera is the box magazine hand camera. 

Nearly all the negatives of the prints on the wall were made by its use, portraiture excepted, of course many hand camera exposures were made with the aid of a small tripod, also such a thing as an umbrella, a wall, even with the help of a Railing fence.  I gave an illustration of some of these dodges at a recent meeting of our society.

As I remarked before the portraits were all taken with the stand camera, most were taken in rooms, a few in a studio, those of Mr. Stening, Mr. Raymond (which I consider one of my best character studies) and Mr. Reid, were taken up here in this room during the lunch hour on different days.

The work on the walls is mostly in Bromide, a few direct carbon and printing out papers amongst them.

I think that bromide has good possibilities if treated carefully with different modification of the developers, exposure, a subsequent toning many different effects can be got from the one negative.

Compare the treatment of “Portrait of Operator” (54) with “the Study in gray” (58).  You will notice the different tones in each. 

One has been developed up strong and fresh, while the “Study in gray” was given a prolonged exposure and developed with the very dilute developer (Amidol) with very little bromide for about 8 to 10 minutes.  This bringing up the image softly and giving a nice gray tone to the print.

I use a reducer to lighten any deep shadows or to heighten a high light, or even to introduce one.  This reducer has the advantage of giving good control, as the action is very even and can be used so as to reduce very slowly or quickly as desired.  Also should the treatment not be sufficient the print can be repeatedly reduced until the correct tone is reached.

As an illustration of this treatment let me refer you to ‘Study of Head’ (65).  This was at first a straight enlargement made from a negative with a plain grey ground at the back of the back of head with manipulation of this Cyanide reducer the ground was entirely nigetted away, giving as you see a rather good sketch effect. 

The beauty of this reducer is that the print can be toned sepia, in the Sodium Sulphide bath after manipulation of course the print requires to be well washed from Hypo and after treatment with the reducer. 

I make up the reducer by dissolving one drachm of Potassium Cyanide in a one ounce bottle of water, labelling this Poison, as it is one of the deadliest poisons known. 

Now dissolve one drachm of Potassium Iodine in another one ounce bottle, now add a few of the metal looking pieces of Iodine (resublimed) to this solution until it turns a deep port wine colour, now label this second bottle "Iodine".

To make up the reducer put two or three ounces of water in a cup or glass, adding a little of the Iodine stock solution until the water takes on the appearance of a sherry tint.  Add a little of the Cynide solution until this tint quite disappears and the solution looks like water again.

Now place your well washed bromide print in a dish slightly tilted so that the surplus solution will run to the bottom of the dish.  Use cotton wool or a camel hair brush, dip this in the reducer and wipe over the parts to lightened then wash quickly with a clean tuft of cotton wool dipped in water and repeat treatment until complete.

Let me advise any intending worker of this reducer, not to do too much, better too little than an over-done print. Sometimes the paper base will turn a bluish transparent tint, take no notice of this, as it will dry right out.  It is evidently due to some chemical action on the paper itself by the Cyanide reducer.

I use Amidol entirely for my bromide work and I find that this developer gives good black tones and allows of many modification such as reducing and toning.

Go for a good black tone in the first instance, in fact I always allow in enlargement to develop to its fullest extent, of course the exposure was correctly timed in the first place, and one will find that a correctly exposed Bromide will develop up to a certain limit then density ceases, it is here I remove my print from the Amidol solution and transfer to the fixing bath. 

This method always gives good brown sepias in toning.  The prints that flash up and are developed in a few seconds generally give weak yellow prints in the sulphide toning bath.Many of the prints on the wall have a slight grain running through them to break up black shadows and to give a slight diffusion throughout the print.

This effect I secure by holding a piece of black chiffon between the enlarging lens and bromide paper, say about 2 inches away from the paper give three quarters of the exposure with this screen and one quarter of the exposure without it, this softens any hard rendering of the grain effect in the subsequent bromide print. 

Of course it would not do to treat every print by this process as it would become very monotonous, let me refer you to some treated in this manner, No. 10 "Sunlight and Shadow", No. 25 "Forest Glade" and No. 41 "Coquette with Cosmos" No. 58 " Study in grey" and others. 

It would hardly do to treat some pictures such as No. 72 “Silver and grey” or “Portrait of my Cousin” in this manner, we would lose the delicate gradation this is present in these subjects.

Another good help to the Bromide worker is a card with a small hole in it, to be used just over the Bromide paper for toning down. 

Say we have a portrait with very hard lights on the hands or in the background, a landscape with hard white sky, these want toning down, but how to do it is the difficulty, well after pencilling an outline of the offending patches upon the surface of the Bromide paper with the yellow cap on the lens after the usual exposure has been made, it can be done before if desired, take the negative out of the carrier in the camera and stop the lens down to about F32 or more so as to get a weak light through the lens, now remove the yellow cap and allow the light to pass through the small hole in the card held before the bromide paper now by working this quickly over the pencilled patches we shield the rest of the Bromide from the weak light and upon development we will find that these hard lights are now nicely toned down. 

Of course a trial print will be probably necessary to gauge the proper exposure and toning down necessary.