Ambrotype

Author	Unknown
Title	[Portrait of a seated man]
Date	ca. 1860
Register	03221

The ambrotype was a photographic procedure that created a positive image on a glass plate, from a negative photograph taken using the wet collodion technique, invented in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer. This technique was used and improved by many photographers until the end of the 19th century. James Ambrose Cuttin patented this technique in the United States in 1854 and called it the ambrotype. Cutting's proposed improvement was essentially that the resulting negative could be seen as a positive by placing the plate on a black background. For this reason, ambrotypes tended to be presented enclosed in boxes or frames, just like daguerreotypes, but unlike these, the image was always seen positively, regardless of its lighting angle. Ambrotype images were usually portraits, with a low-contrast tone and a creamy or grey colour, which is why many were coloured by hand and even varnished.

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