Commendations from 1937

For all of you working this craft, this quote from C.E. Kenneth Mees, chief of research at Eastman Kodak from 1912.

"The photographer had to make his own materials in the early days of photography. When using the wet collodion process, for instance, he cleaned his glass, coated it with collodion, and sensitized the plate by dipping it in a bath of silver nitrate, which was done in a portable darkroom. Then, after making the exposure in a camera, he developed the negative on the spot before the film had time to dry. When he wanted a print for the negative, he prepared his paper. Sometimes he used paper which had been coated by a manufacturer with albumen; sometimes he coated his own paper with white of egg containing the necessary salts. In any case, he sensitized the paper by floating it on a bath of silver nitrate and dried it, and then he printed the negative, washed, toned, and fixed the print, and could say with truth that he had made a photograph.

from Photography, Second edition 1942 by C.E.K. Mees