Photography and the Environment

Pictures were manufactured back then with chemicals and without caution. Chemicals, that are now considered dangerous to the environment, were readily available at the corner drug store and at the photograph supply shops for a small price and without question. I don’t remember that age was a factor that had any effect on my buying potassium bichromate, sulfuric acid, silver nitrate or any of the other chemicals which might be an ingredient in making up a recipe for developing, fixing, reducing or intensifying images on negative film.

Early film was celluloid. That’s cellulose nitrate, the same thing as gun cotton. It was extremely inflammable. It was in general use in film for cameras and in movie film until safety film (cellulose acetate) was adopted for use as a film base. It’s adoption must have been a relief to movie projector operators, who no longer had to worry about the frequent film fires, that threatened whenever the film reels were stopped in hot carbon-arced projector systems. It was said that projection booths were locked so operators could perish without unduly endangering moviegoers. If flames didn’t get them, the noxious fumes from explosively burning celluloid would. I have no statistics on how many projectionists became victims of film fires. But, as a teen age experimenter, I learned that just a few frames of movie film, rolled into a tight ½ inch diameter, lit with a match and popped into a coffee can, tightly closed, would result in an explosion which sent the can top high into the air. Film often broke during projection and the projectionist would stop the movie while he trimmed out the damaged section and spliced the broken ends of the film together. The damaged section of film ended up in the alley trash can, where it kept me supplied, so I could show my school mates how to blow up coffee cans. It’s all safety film now, so don’t try it, it won’t work anymore.

After photographic chemicals became exhausted and needed to be disposed of, we flushed them down the drain. These were the days before “environment” was a common word.

Born with an insatiable curiosity, I felt a need to work with and experiment with the technical aspects of photography, particularly on varying developers and time of development, as well as changing lighting and exposure times. I found that portrait photography could be improved from the norm by grossly increasing the time of development, after purposely under exposing the film. This process separated the facial highlights and resulted in a graduation of skin tones. It gave character and form to the facial image. The “norm” in exposure and film development had most often resulted in stark-white flat faces without depth and roundness. Depending on temperature common film developers called for 10 or 15 minutes of developing time. My under exposed film sometimes required a full hour, and additional bromide to resist fogging (graying) due to the extreme development time.

My discovery was not the discovery of a lifetime! When my enthusiasm for the art of photography led to my reading books written by those who were to become my heroes, I learned that my discovery was already known. Previously discovered and mostly rejected. It was not practiced in established studios because of the time it consumed. As they say, “Time is money”. Professional photographers do not have the luxury of experimenting with each order and fine-tuning to get each exposure and developing time just right with varying subjects.

Anyhow, improvements in materials and in lighting later made my procedure unnecessary to achieve the same results. Logic would have compelled me to study my books, and apply the procedures described to me by master photographers. But, I continued to pursue my dreams, while my photographs continued to be compromised by experimental tinkering. My pictures generally weren’t very good at that stage, but then my time was not worth money, so I continued to experiment and did not neglect the time of development and exposure thing. Some of my worst and some of my best portraits used the process. Even later, when I had a studio of my own, I often used the procedure on friends, who would pose, gratis after hours. So photography was sometimes still a hobby with me, even then, and I produced portraits that I am still most proud of, when I took the time required to experiment. This picture of my friend "Mary", which I took back in 1948, used my “underexposure and develop for an hour” procedure. This portrait is still one of my favorites.