Collins Unbound

I bet you didn’t know that the Archives & Special Collections has several boxes of what are known as “glass plate negatives.” These are literally photo negatives on pieces of glass, and they are extremely delicate (being thin glass). Most of the small black and white photos along the wall of librarians’ offices in the Information Commons are actually prints of these negatives, so if you’d like a good example, that’s the place to look.

Instead of being the stark black and white negatives on plastic that we’re more prone to think of now, this 19th-20^th century technique created plates with less definitive contrast, resulting in dark grey-versus-light gray areas. However a glass negative was still preferable to paper, as paper resulted in “unsatisfactory” results due to paper grain and fuzziness. A glass plate negative was typically done using a “wet” method, where the glass would be coated in a photo-sensitive substance and immediately sensitized, exposed and developed before it could dry, which took anywhere from five to fifteen minutes. Most of the negatives we have boxed up are more than likely “dry plates, “ though, since the University was established in 1888, and “wet plates” quickly went out of style in 1880, after the dry plate came into existence.

Another “problem” with glass plate photography was size – enlargement was impractical in the 1800s, so any created negative would need to be in the desired size of the final print. Can you imagine trying to carry around a 20×24 inch piece of glass or two without breaking it? No wonder photography was a big deal back then.

This glass-plate method was used up until about 1975, when the cellulose negative finally became popular. After that, of course, we moved onto digital photography, which doesn’t require a negative at all.

By Morgan Ford

Allegorical manuscript for King Francis I titled “Love’s Game of Chess” from Bibliotheque Nationale. See Verve no. 1 – call number N1 V4 1937.

The artistic and literary quarterly Verve was published in 1930s Paris by director Teriade (born Stratis Eleftheriades). Its mission was described as the following:

“VERVE proposes to present art as intimately mingled with the life of each period and to furnish testimony of the participation by artists in the essential events of their time.

It is devoted to artistic creation in all fields and all forms.

VERVE has adopted a traditional form.
It will present documents as they are, without any arrangement which might detract from their naturalness. The value of its elements will depend upon their character, the selection of them that has been made and the significance they assume through their disposition in the magazine.

Divagation by Henri Matisse. See Verve no. 1 – call number N1 V4 1937.

That the illustrations may retain the import of the originals, VERVE will utilize the technical methods best suited to each reproduction. It will call on the best specialists of heliogravure in colors and in black and white, as well as of typography, and will not disdain to employ the forgotten process of lithography.

The luxuriousness of VERVE will consist in the publication of documents as fully and as perfectly as possible.”

The prose and poetry published in Verve was by many famous writers of the early twentieth century, including Federico Garcia Lorca and Henri Michaux. The magazine also contains photographs by some of the most renowned and radical photographers of the time, such as Man Ray, Brassai, and Marcel Bovis. Henri Matisse, Abraham Rattner, and Gustave Courbet were just some of the illustrious painters included in the publication, amongst much older and anonymous work from the sixteenth century onwards.

A variety of images and writings from Verve will be featured consistently on the Puget Sound Archives & Special Collections tumblr. Here is a preview!

By Maya Steinborn