My daughter very thoughtfully gave me a book for Christmas, “ How to make Good Pictures” put out by Eastman Kodak in the 50s, and curiously bearing no author’s name. In the darkroom section of this historical relic I came across a mention of Kodak’s Velite paper, a contact printing paper that apparently was so slow you could develop it in “moderate room light”.  I thought I had at one time or another experienced all the late lamented photo printing papers that Kodak offered but I had never run across Velite before.



Knowing that many readers have probably not used contact paper or for that matter made a ‘wet’ photo print, I will elaborate a bit: contact papers were very slow ( i.e. relatively insensitive to light) black-and-white photography printing papers which were too slow to use for enlargements. They were only useful when the negative was in direct contact with the photo paper, hence the name. The standard bearer was Kodak’s Azo contact paper, a paper with exquisite tones – unlike Velite it required a safelight. But if you were a view camera photographer you could get some lovely prints with the material – just ask Brett Weston. As the slogan said: “Print on Azo and make the most beautiful photographic prints that your negatives are capable of yielding.” And for once the hype wasn’t far off the mark.

 

Brett Weston, Ivy and Leaves, 1978

 

Once I ran out of enlarging paper in the middle of printing for a deadline and all I had left was Azo contrast number two. It was late at night so I couldn’t run down to the local photography store. It was the one time I was not happy to see a box of Kodak Azo. The average exposure on my enlarger was a minute and half with the lens at maximum aperture. ( as compared to less than 10 seconds with enlarging paper) and Instead of my usual practice of diluting the paper developer I had to use it at full strength to try to suck an image out of the contact paper. It made for a very long night and a very overheated enlarger and sadly some very ordinary looking prints!

 

 



Making a contact print . . .

Apparently Azo has joined the other great Kodak papers in the dust of history although there seems to be is a lone ( as of 2009) Azo dealer left; go to http://www.michaelandpaula.com to see if they’re still selling this wondrous paper.




Making an enlargement

 


Azo wasn’t the only fine Kodak paper. Some of the Kodak’s enlarging papers haven’t been equaled either, particularly the warm-tone papers, most of which originated during the pictorial era of photography. Their names conjured up luxury like the badges of fine cars. There was Opal and Platino paper, both very similar, and Illustrator’s Special, an Opal-type paper that apparently was Paul Strand’s favorite and I was quite fond of it myself: like most of these papers it yielded deep, lustrous bronzed tones which could be extravagant or muted, depending upon which chemicals were used. There was also Ektalure, Aristo, and Medalist, a slightly cooler paper. And the surfaces of these papers rivaled the finest printmaking papers; in the matte papers alone there was smooth , fine-grained and suede matte, the latter more like fine leather than a photo paper. You had more choices with the luster finish, or as Kodak liked to spell it, lustre, including ‘high lustre’ and tweed. And if you didn’t like Kodak’s papers, there were a number of others available, including those made by DuPont, with a list almost as distinguished.




The beginning of the end came with the introduction of variable-contrast papers in the 60s -certainly more convenient, they gave you serviceable prints but rarely great ones. Pretty soon you were down to glossy, semi-glossy, and matte when it came to surfaces. And then the death knell: the introduction in the 70s of resin-coated paper, even more convenient but most would agree, of even lower quality.

 




So you can’t blame the demise of beautiful photography paper on digital photography; in fact, you’d have to go back to the decline of pictorialism in the 40s; certainly by the 60s when I was a young photographer these papers were getting difficult to find, almost as difficult as finding a pictorial photographer (outside of camera clubs!)

 

Actually digital technology reintroduced fine paper to photography, making it possible to print photographs on the finest imported printmaking papers with a variety of surfaces, sadly none of which bear a once-great trademark: that of Eastman Kodak.




Digital print on Hahnemuehle bamboo paper  – photo by Scott Nichol