Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 16))

MY EXPERIENCE OF THE RAWLINS OIL PROCESS.
[Mr. Demachy was kind enough to send us six of his experiments with the above process. These
interesting prints will be on exhibition at the Photo-Secession Galleries during the autumn.
In any attempt at reproduction, the specific character of the process would be entirely lost, and
the reproductions would resemble those made from Mr. Demachy’sgum-prints, which are
to be seen in this number of Camera Work. — Editor.]
THE oil process is no novelty. It was invented by Poitevin
at the same period as gum bichromate, in 1855, and revived
by Mr. H. Rawlins, in 1904. A full description of the
working of it is to be found in the October number of the
Amateur Photographer (London), of that same year. The results were not
all that could be desired. Since then, Mr. Rawlins has amended and sim-
plified his methods. A few months ago I took the process up a second
time, in order to give a fairly practical account of its working conditions in
a book that the Paris Photo-Club has just brought out, and I have come to
the conclusion that oil printing has come to stay, and that it is an extremely
valuable addition to the actual processes used by pictorial photographers.
In fact, I know of no other method that can allow such freedom of treat-
ment. But the process does not seem to have been specially studied from
this point of view—the main point, in my opinion—and the experiments I
have been making on different papers, with different inks and varied degrees
of exposure, may interest those amongst my readers for whom values and
quality of medium have some importance. On the contrary, from the
“ straight-print ” point of view, the process will prove tedious, and quite
inferior to platinum. This as a warning.
Photographers are supposed to know that a thin layer of bichromated
gelatine, when exposed to light, in contact with and under a glass negative,
will shortly develop a brown image which, once plentifully washed and then
dabbed with blotting-paper, will show a faint relief, and a curious difference
of surface between the exposed and protected portions. These last will be
damp and shiny, the others matt and relatively dry. This is the first stage
of the Rawlins process. At the next one, photography steps out; it has
nothing whatever to do with the rest of the operations, which are as follows:
If a layer of greasy, colored ink is spread over the damp film, it will stick
to the matt parts, and be expelled by the moist ones—a positive image will
result. Not a crude black-and-white image, such as one would think prob-
able, but one with the most delicate half-tones and the most perfect model-
ing. Spread the gelatine over a thick sheet of glass, and you will have a
collotype plate; spread it over a sheet of paper, and you will have a Rawlins
print. It is simplicity itself.
Collotype printing is used all the world over, so it is but natural that
Mr. Rawlins should have chosen at first the collotype inking method—with
the roller. But his thin gelatine film spread over wet and spongy paper was
often more or less abraded by the repeated passage of the rubber or leather
cylinder. And the fatty ink, sinking through the desintegrated gelatine,
stained the underlying paper, and spoilt the picture—spoilt it irretrievably.

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