The Daily Bulletin Archive

Please join the Chemistry and Physics departments for the seminar "The Characterization of Nineteenth-Century Photographic Processes: A Close Look at Daguerreotypes and a Little on Platinotypes," presented by Patrick Ravines, associate professor and director of the Garman Art Conservation Department at Buffalo State, on Thursday, October 12, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Science and Math Complex 169.

Abstract
This talk will briefly introduce the scientific challenges that cultural heritage, artistic, and historic works present to chemists, physicists, and material scientists. The talk will then focus on research that has been undertaken to understand early photographic processes such as the daguerreotype and platinum prints and platinotypes. The daguerreotype was the first viable imaging process invented and developed by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre in Paris in 1839. It gave birth to photography and started the imaging revolution. The daguerreotype gained enthusiastic worldwide acceptance as the first commercially viable form of photography, and it had a short yet productive existence from 1839 until 1860. The following sections will describe the historical daguerreotype process as practiced today by artists, professional photographers, and aficionados. The process has been examined in detail at each of its many steps with scanning and transmission electron microscopies, optical microscopies, vibrational spectroscopies, and x-ray diffraction to reveal nanometer and submicrometer features at the surface and sub- or meso-surface that are involved in the image-making process. If there is time at the end of the talk, I will present some of our current research on platinotypes that shows that the image-making particles are nanoparticles embedded in the cellulose fibers that make up the paper sheet. Knowing more of these physical photochemical processes increases our appreciation for the object itself and the complexities related to their preservation.