History of Photography in Brighton

Albumen in Photography

Albumen is a clear,organic material found in its purest form in the white of an egg. Smooth, transparent and sticky, albumen was seen as a suitable binder in photography. In 1847, the French army officer and chemist Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor (1805-1870),coated glass plates with egg-white mixed with potassium iodide and then sensitized the dried plates in a bath of silver nitrate. The albumen-coated glass plates made fine, photographic negatives, but exposure times ranged from five to fifteen minutes and so were only really suitable for photographing landscapes or buildings. Albumen glass negatives were soon superseded by Fred Scott Archer's collodion glass negatives.