Photo printing in the 1940s.
April 29, 2023 2:17 PM Subscribe
My wife has a family photograph taken sometime between 1942 to mid 1944. This picture is printed on KODAK photographic paper with the Ben Day process used for newspaper photographs done with tiny equal sized dots of different shadings. This is normally used for large print runs of newspaper images. I have never heard of it used for single images. Do any of you know anything about single printings with the Ben Day process? Could this have been from WW2 rationing of photo chemicals? Where can I read up on this?
Additive-colour films like Autochrome and Dufaycolor, which use discrete dots of colour, were still in use in the 1940s. Could it be a print (or photographic enlargement) made from one of those?
posted by offog at 2:50 PM on April 29, 2023
posted by offog at 2:50 PM on April 29, 2023
Here's a guide to the history and use of halftone in photography from the Getty Institute. They cover monochrome, duotone and 3 colour photographic methods.
posted by Zedcaster at 4:46 PM on April 29, 2023
posted by Zedcaster at 4:46 PM on April 29, 2023
Is there any trace of wax on the back?
Building on Zedcaster's response, as far as I know, every offset-press printed black and white halftone photograph before the advent of digital prepress had a photographic "original" that fits the description of the image in your possession. (It's possible there were processes that bypassed the creation of something like this, but I'm not aware of them.)
I also made these in the late 1990s, in my case for a weekly paper that was in the process of transitioning to QuarkXPress. I used a giant stat camera (similar to these, though not quite as grand) mounted through the wall of the paper's darkroom--the dark side of the wall was essentually the interior of a giant camera. These positive halftones were made by re-photographing the original (non-halftone) photograph taken by the paper's cameraperson through a transparent sheet with the screen pattern on it; the result was a full-sized, high-contrast photograph rendered in black dots of varying sizes. It sounds like this might be what you have.
Normally, these halftone photographs had hot wax applied to their backs, which was used to stick them--repositionably--to the board where the newspaper page was composed, a process called "pasting up." More about the wax paset-up process of newspaper production.
After the pasted-up page was finalized, it was photographed again to make a full-size negative, which was then used to burn the printing plates. At this point, the halftone photographs would usually just be discarded with the rest of the page, but they could absolutely be peeled off, cleaned up, and saved, or given to the subjects. I definitely still have a few somewhere. If there's no sign of wax, it's also possible your photograph was a proof or extra copy. If I recall correctly the paper I worked at would occasionally even give them to the subject of an interview or feature.
tl;dr: Is it possible this photograph was in a local paper or some other printed material? If so, this could have been used in its production.
posted by pullayup at 7:37 PM on April 29, 2023
Building on Zedcaster's response, as far as I know, every offset-press printed black and white halftone photograph before the advent of digital prepress had a photographic "original" that fits the description of the image in your possession. (It's possible there were processes that bypassed the creation of something like this, but I'm not aware of them.)
I also made these in the late 1990s, in my case for a weekly paper that was in the process of transitioning to QuarkXPress. I used a giant stat camera (similar to these, though not quite as grand) mounted through the wall of the paper's darkroom--the dark side of the wall was essentually the interior of a giant camera. These positive halftones were made by re-photographing the original (non-halftone) photograph taken by the paper's cameraperson through a transparent sheet with the screen pattern on it; the result was a full-sized, high-contrast photograph rendered in black dots of varying sizes. It sounds like this might be what you have.
Normally, these halftone photographs had hot wax applied to their backs, which was used to stick them--repositionably--to the board where the newspaper page was composed, a process called "pasting up." More about the wax paset-up process of newspaper production.
After the pasted-up page was finalized, it was photographed again to make a full-size negative, which was then used to burn the printing plates. At this point, the halftone photographs would usually just be discarded with the rest of the page, but they could absolutely be peeled off, cleaned up, and saved, or given to the subjects. I definitely still have a few somewhere. If there's no sign of wax, it's also possible your photograph was a proof or extra copy. If I recall correctly the paper I worked at would occasionally even give them to the subject of an interview or feature.
tl;dr: Is it possible this photograph was in a local paper or some other printed material? If so, this could have been used in its production.
posted by pullayup at 7:37 PM on April 29, 2023
Response by poster: pullayup.
Thank you for the information. There is no wax on the back of the photo paper. This is a posed shot of my wifes' grandmother and aunts taken on their lawn in Claremont NH. It could have been taken for the local paper. They might have been given this print after the paper no longer needed it. Another clue may be in that the print is a 5X7. Their family camera used a smaller format.
posted by Raybun at 12:00 PM on April 30, 2023
Thank you for the information. There is no wax on the back of the photo paper. This is a posed shot of my wifes' grandmother and aunts taken on their lawn in Claremont NH. It could have been taken for the local paper. They might have been given this print after the paper no longer needed it. Another clue may be in that the print is a 5X7. Their family camera used a smaller format.
posted by Raybun at 12:00 PM on April 30, 2023
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I'm no printing expert but I think Ben Day is the printing press end of the process to get the image to paper. In the darkroom you'd make a halftone print to get the photo ready for printing.
posted by Zedcaster at 2:50 PM on April 29, 2023 [3 favorites]