This work is from Micky Allan’s seminal series, Babies, which typifies Allan’s hand-colouring technique. She pioneered this technique in the 1970s. While in many ways a logical extension of her training as a painter, Allan realised that hand-colouring photographic prints challenged many of the prevailing conventions of photography. In the first instance, it disrupted the virtue of the fine print which depended on complex scientific and technological knowledge. And at a time when the figure of the photographer was held to be a disinterested and dispassionate recorder of the world, hand-colouring introduced a personal and autobiographical element to the photographic print. Furthermore, hand-colouring her photographs also allowed Allan to acknowledge the under recognised history of women’s photographic work since historically, women were employed by studios to hand-paint or tone photographic prints.
(2016)
Gelatin silver prints are black-and-white photographic prints that have been created using papers coated with an emulsion of gelatin and light-sensitive silver salts. After the papers are briefly exposed to light (usually through a negative), a chemical developer renders the latent image as reduced silver, which is then fixed and washed. This technique was first introduced in the 1870s and is still used today. Most twentieth-century black-and-white photographs are gelatin silver prints. They are known for being highly detailed and sharply defined prints with a distinguishable smooth, even image surface.
