FIVE PROCESSES

One magnolia bud. Five ways of seeing it. Five processes from the 19th century.

Daguerreotype Daguerreotype
Cyanotype Cyanotype
Albumen Albumen
Ambrotype Ambrotype
Tintype Tintype

In the spring of 2025, the same magnolia bud was rendered through five processes that photographers used before film existed — each one a different chemistry, a different relationship between light and surface, a different understanding of what a photograph could be.

The Daguerreotype process, invented in 1839, produced mirror-like silver plates — each image unique, unrepeatable, existing nowhere else. The Cyanotype, from 1842, used iron salts to produce its characteristic Prussian blue — the process that gave us blueprints. The Albumen print, dominant from the 1850s through 1890s, used egg white as a binder — delicate, warm-toned, prone to fading. The Ambrotype was a glass negative made to look positive by backing it with dark material — a kind of elegant illusion. The Tintype was democracy's photograph — cheap, durable, made on thin iron, given to soldiers before they left for war.

The same bud. The same light. Five different answers to the question of what was there.