Graphics Atlas: Guided Tour

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from the group: Direct Carbon (Fresson)

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Pre-photographic

Intaglio

Planographic

Relief

Photomechanical

Collotype

Letterpress

Offset Lithography

Offset Lithograph (Halftone Postcard)

Photogravure

Rotogravure

Woodburytype

Photographic

Albumen

Ambrotype

Bromoil

Bromoil

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Carbon

Carbro

Chromogenic

Collodion POP

Cyanotype

Daguerreotype

Direct Carbon (Fresson)

Dye Imbibition

Gelatin Dry Plate

Gelatin POP

Gum Dichromate

Instant (Diffusion Transfer)

Instant (Dye Diffusion Transfer)

Instant (Internal Dye Diffusion Transfer)

Matte Collodion

Platinum

Salted Paper

Screen Plate

Silver Dye Bleach

Silver Gelatin DOP

Tintype

Wet Plate Collodion

Digital

Electrophotography

Inkjet

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Notes on this view:

The Fresson process was particularly popular among pictorialist photographers due to the softness of the image and velvety surface provided by the process. Pictorialist artists strove to elevate photography to the status of fine art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often favoring processes that offered soft images.

Direct carbon, most widely known as the Fresson process, was commercially introduced in 1900 as an improvement to the Artique process. In the late nineteenth century there was an interest in producing a carbon printing paper that did not require cumbersome transferring of the carbon tissue for development, but still gave good mid-tones. Fresson does not require transfer, but rather is developed with a slurry of sawdust and water. Fresson paper was commercially available in Europe from about 1900 until WWII and in America from 1927 to 1939. The Fresson family maintains proprietary secrecy of the details of this process and continues to make prints for artists to this day.