Carbon transfer is one of the most important (and beautiful) historical processes; along with gumprint and oilprint it is one of the essential techniques utilizing the light sensitivity of organic coloids sensitized with chromium salts. In the past, materials for carbon transfer used to be manufactured by the Autotype company (hence the other name of the process), today, they need to be manufactured by the photographer. As a curiosity, best attesting to the prestige the process used to be accompanied by, it should be remembered that many photographers of the past would offer their customers a choice of technique that would be used to make the prints they ordered. If the customer was less demanding (and less willing to spend money), one of the cheaper and simpler processes, such as the albumen print, would be used. Carbon transfer, along with the platinum print, would have been reserved for the most demanding customers who were willing to pay considerably more. Even though, similarly to the gumprint, carbon transfer utilises the fact that organic coloids, in this case gelatin, sensitized with potassium or ammonium bichromate change their properties and lose solubility in water, this is where similarities end. Carbon transfer prints, even those made from a single layer, are characterised by deep blacks, powerful expression and reach detail combined with subtle tonal variations. Carbon transfer combines power and subtlety and is equally suited to dramatic landscapes, medieval ruins an delicate female nudes. Today, after years of near oblivion, the process once more comes to favour offering advantages unattainable to most photographic processes, such as: excellent, almost unrivalled permanence of hundreds of years...
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