The Albumen Print — Victorian Photography's Dominant Printing Process

The albumen print dominated photography from the 1850s to the 1890s — the most widely used photographic printing process of the 19th century. Invented by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard in 1850, the albumen print uses egg white (albumen) as a binding agent to hold light-sensitive silver chloride on the paper surface, producing prints with a smooth, slightly glossy finish and rich tonal range that far exceeded the matte, fibrous quality of earlier salted paper prints. Billions of albumen prints were produced during the Victorian era: cartes de visite, cabinet cards, stereoviews, travel photographs, and portraits. The vast majority of surviving 19th-century photographs are albumen prints. This guide covers the history, chemistry, preparation technique, printing method, toning, preservation, and the distinctive beauty of albumen printing.

History and Dominance

Blanquart-Evrard's innovation was to coat paper with a layer of albumen (whipped and settled egg white) mixed with salt (sodium chloride or ammonium chloride) before sensitising with silver nitrate. The albumen layer served two purposes: it held the salt and subsequent silver particles on the paper surface rather than allowing them to sink into the fibres, and it created a smooth, glossy coating that produced sharper, more detailed images with richer tones than unsized salted paper. The process was so successful that commercial albumen paper manufacturing became a major industry. By the 1860s, factories in Saxony, Germany, were consuming millions of eggs annually to produce albumen paper for the global photographic market. The process remained dominant until the 1890s, when gelatin silver printing paper — faster, more convenient, and more stable — gradually replaced it.

Preparing the Albumen Paper

Separate egg whites from yolks (historically, large-scale producers used hundreds of eggs per batch). Whisk the egg whites to a stiff foam. Add salt — typically 2–3% ammonium chloride or sodium chloride by volume. Allow the foam to settle back to liquid (this takes 12–24 hours; some practitioners age the albumen for days or weeks, which improves smoothness and coating quality). Filter the settled albumen through a fine cloth to remove any remaining foam, bubbles, or solid matter. Float high-quality rag paper (smooth, thin writing paper — Rives BFK or Canson Mi-Teintes work for modern practitioners) on the albumen surface for 2–3 minutes, allowing the albumen to coat one side of the paper evenly. Hang to dry. The dried albumen-coated paper has a smooth, slightly glossy surface. Before printing, sensitise the paper by floating it on a 12% silver nitrate solution for 2–3 minutes, then dry in the dark. The silver nitrate reacts with the chloride in the albumen to form silver chloride — the light-sensitive compound.

Printing Process

Albumen printing is a "printing-out" process — the image forms directly under the action of light, without chemical development. The sensitised paper is placed in contact with a negative (originally a glass-plate collodion negative; today, enlarged digital negatives on transparency film work perfectly) inside a spring-loaded printing frame. The frame is placed in direct sunlight or strong UV light. As light passes through the negative's clear areas and is blocked by the dense areas, the silver chloride in the corresponding regions reduces to metallic silver, forming the visible image. Printing takes 10–60 minutes in direct sunlight, depending on the negative density and the light intensity. The practitioner periodically opens one half of the printing frame (hinged back) to check the developing image against the negative. Prints must be slightly overexposed because toning and fixing will reduce the image density.

Toning and Fixing

After printing, the image is toned — most commonly with gold chloride, which both enriches the colour (shifting the raw reddish-brown print colour to a more neutral or purple-brown tone) and dramatically improves the image's permanence by replacing some of the metallic silver with more stable gold. The toning bath is typically a dilute gold chloride solution (1 gram per litre of water) with a small amount of sodium bicarbonate or borax to buffer the pH. The print is immersed and agitated gently until the desired colour shift is achieved — typically 3–10 minutes. After toning, the print is fixed in sodium thiosulphate solution (5% concentration) for 5–10 minutes to remove the unexposed silver chloride. Thorough washing follows — at least 30–60 minutes in running water — to remove all residual chemicals that would otherwise cause the print to deteriorate over time.

The Albumen Print Aesthetic

Well-made albumen prints have a distinctive appearance: a warm image tone ranging from reddish-brown to chocolate-brown (untoned) or cool purple-brown (gold-toned), set against the smooth, slightly glossy albumen surface that sits above the paper texture. The albumen layer gives the highlights a luminous, translucent quality — light seems to glow from within the paper. The shadow tones are rich and deep. The overall impression is of warmth, delicacy, and historical gravitas. Albumen prints from master photographers like Gustave Le Gray, Francis Frith, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Carleton Watkins demonstrate the extraordinary beauty the process can achieve — tonal richness, luminous highlights, and an intimate, hand-crafted presence.

Preservation and Deterioration

Albumen prints are inherently unstable — the albumen layer yellows over time as the protein degrades, and the finely divided metallic silver is vulnerable to atmospheric pollutants (hydrogen sulphide, ozone) that cause fading and yellowing. Proper fixation and toning dramatically improve longevity, but even well-processed albumen prints fade over decades. Storage in cool, dry, dark conditions with acid-free matting slows deterioration. Many surviving 19th-century albumen prints show characteristic yellowing in the highlights and midtones — this deterioration, while a conservation concern, has become part of the aesthetic identity of the process for many viewers. For modern practitioners, careful chemistry and gold toning produce prints of excellent long-term stability.

Modern Albumen Printing

Contemporary albumen printers benefit from digital negatives — inkjet-printed negatives on transparency film, calibrated to match the albumen paper's response curve, allow any digital image to be printed as an albumen print. This marriage of digital capture and historical process gives the photographer complete creative control over the image while retaining the handmade, historical quality of the final print. The process is relatively accessible: eggs, salt, silver nitrate, gold chloride, and good paper are all readily available. The main investment is time and attention — preparing the albumen, coating the paper, sensitising, printing, toning, fixing, and washing takes a full day for a small batch of prints. The reward is a photographic object with a beauty, warmth, and presence that no inkjet printer can match.