Did Edward Weston tone his prints?

[Michael R]

In addition to everything discussed so far I'd caution that when viewing a series of prints it can be tricky to evaluate tone/color in absolute terms. The subjective impressions of stuff like cool/warm can be influenced by a variety of things including matting and lighting (not to mention bias). A print might appear cool in one context and neutral or warm in another (next to a bluer print for example).

[tundra]

I wouid attribute at least some of that to his use of Amidol as a developer.

[EarlJam]

EarlJam, that is a beautiful image. What a treasure!

Agree. My dad always talked about "the Westons" and I know that my grandparents had a print of this one framed, on the wall of their living room. I'm pretty sure it was also a signed print, but I don't know which one of my dad's siblings got it when my grandparents passed. None of my cousins have ever mentioned it, so best case it's in a box somewhere, worst that it's been lost to history.

[Mark Sampson]

Certainly Weston's printing methods changed over time, as did his photographic style. He wrote about these changes in his Mexico Daybooks (without mentioning specific brands or products), as he went from platinum prints and warm-toned silver papers to glossy "commercial" papers.
He did use an amidol paper developer; the recipe has been published in several places, and a kit is available from Photographer's Formulary.
To go farther off-topic, the book "Darkroom 2" has a chapter showing how Cole printed his father's negatives in the 1970s; Cole used Ilfobrom paper. And one of the "Weston's Westons" books has a long description of the differences between prints Edward made himself, and the ones that Brett made as part of the "project' series of prints in the 1950s (when Edward was no longer capable). None of those references are to hand right now, but I don't recall toning being mentioned anywhere.

[Drew Wiley]

Odd. It's Adams' prints, and his addiction to Dektol, which seem greenish to me, and not EW's. But it's not fair to compare EW's commercial portrait studio work to his personal printmaking esthetic. And all of his earlier work was basically warmish and pictorial.

[David Lindquist]

Lens flare, camera flare, emulsion halation are all factors that are routinely ignored in favour of leaping on facile chemical obsessions. The paper curve shape is where you want to look - the rest is basic process control.



Chloride papers can go quite cold blue/black quite easily - especially in very normal developers. At the end of the day, Kodak usually claimed that Azo gave a neutral black with Illustrators' Azo as a warmer variant, Velite/ Velox being colder and Athena & Aristo warmer contact speed papers.
Weston claimed to like Haloid's (who became Xerox) contact paper - but the differences between chloride contact paper formulations are often not great. It may well have been that single-weight Haloid was cheaper than the Kodak (or Agfa/ Ansco etc) product.
There were warmtone variants that used various other heavy metal salts, reverse addition steps at precipitation etc to cause particular crystal habits to from.

At one point Weston used Ansco Convira, a contact printing paper. The 1940 U.S. Camera annual has a piece regarding Edward Weston's Guggenheim funded project of photographing California and the West. It includes a statement of equipment and materials used. For film he used Agfa Isopan "tray developed by inspection in ABC Pyro Soda with carbonate cut to less than half." "Negatives are printed on Convira No. 2, developed in Amidol."

May as well give the rest of it equipment-wise: 8 X 10 Century Universal camera; Ries tripod; Turner -Reich triple convertible lens (12" - 21"-28") plus a 19" Zeiss Protar; Worsching Counter Light Cap; Weston meter. For filters, he had a K2 at the start, added a G the first year and an A the second year.

Many years ago at a workshop, Ansel Adams told the story that Weston was so pleased with the Convira that he wrote Ansco. Ansco of course was delighted that the first photographer to win a Guggenheim liked one of their products. They wrote him back thanking him and sent him a complimentary case of their "new, improved version" of Convira. Ansel said Edward couldn't get a print he liked to save his soul from this new version.

Caveat: This is what I remember from a good 40 years ago and when Ansel told the story it had happened a good 40 years before that.

David

[David Lindquist]

Then from Volume II, The Daybooks of Edward Weston:

January 6, 1928 "I use both Gevaert and Illingworth bromide, for contact and enlarging, and an Amidol developer."

January 27, 1932 "A demonstrator for 'Velour Black' sent me a trial package: - it is so much superior to the papers that I had been using that I changed without hesitation."

David

[Drew Wiley]

Brett apparently souped up his own amidol formula with a fair amount of sodium carbonate accelerant, though he did so in combination with citric acid antioxidant to prolong tray life, which partially cancelled out each other pH-wise, and actually compromised much of the sodium carb effect. I figured out the sodium carbonate is completely redundant in terms of getting deeper blacks. But without it, you do get a distinctly acidic rather than alkaline developer, so can't employ an acidic stop bath afterwards, and have to resort to a plain water stop.

[Chester McCheeserton]

Thanks everyone...Sounds like he probably didn't. So if I wanted to try to get close to that look using todays materials I'd use amidol from formulary and that adox lupex stuff that only comes in grade 3?

Let's pretend I have a perfectly exposed and contrasted negative - which as interneg correctly pointed out is the crux of the matter

Are there any other silver chloride papers available?

[bmikiten]

I have several of his original prints as well as Cole prints and the originals (IMHO) were done on Azo with Amidol. I don't detect any toning when compared to old prints I have done with the same combination and no toning. I found that Azo didn't really have extensive response to selenium but I did use it only for preservation value.