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Single Negative: To take these small portraits, Disderi first made a wet-plate negative with a special Camera that had four lenses and a plateholder that could be slid from side to side. Four exposures were made on each half of the plate; thus eight poses could be taken on one negative. A single print from this negative could then be cut up into eight separate portraits. Unskilled labor was used for this work; the production of the cameraman and printer was thus increased eightfold.The dots appear in varying size, depending on the tones of the original photographs. A negative copy of the picture is first made with a camera, inside of which is fitted the halftone screen. This negative is then printed on a metal coated with bichromated gelatin. The dots on the negative allow light to penetrate and render the glue insoluble, so that when the plate is etched with acid each single dot remains on the surface of the plate, which is then mounted at type height on a wooden block. In the final print the minute clusters of dots cannot be distinguished, but appear as tones of gray.
He would have needed a huge studio and many models to take this picture with a single negative. Instead, he enlisted the services of a troupe of strolling players and photographed them in groups at scales appropriate to the distance at which they were to appear from the spectator. On other negatives he photographed models of the stage. He made thirty negatives in all, which he masked so they would fit together like a picture puzzle. Then, painstakingly masking a sheet of sensitized paper to match each negative in turn, he printed them one after the other in the appropriate positions. |
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