Bringing back the Ink Print
Filed under: Ink Process, Cyanotype, Photography
Have you ever heard of the Ink Process? No? Well, neither had I till a few months ago.
If you have, then, well, you must read a lot of old german photography books. Cause that’s what I was doing when I came across the following recipe in the fifth edition of “Photochemie und Beschreibung der photographischen Chemikalien” from 1905.
- 10g of ferric sulfate
- 20ml of ferric chloride
- 10g of gelatin
- 10g of tartaric acid
- 300g of distilled water
In addition to that there is a developer made from 1L of water, 4g of gallic acid and 0.5-1g of oxalic acid.
This was described as the “Colas Tintenprozess” or “Colas Ink Process”, a black and white positive process patented in 1880 that at first glance looks incredibly similar to cyanotype, with a sensitizer made up of a source of iron in its +3 oxidation state and a dicarboxylic acid.
The interesting part though is the developer, which instead of consisting of potassium ferricyanide consists of gallic acid (and oxalic acid, but we’ll get to that later).