Silver:
This is the common everyday photograph of the 20th century, produces rich tonal scale, is simple to use compared with others, and can be make very permanent. It is versatile and images can be toned with other metals to give subtle color variation.
The camera produces a negative which can be printed onto silver paper while the negative and paper are in direct contact with each other. These contact prints reproduce all of the tonal range and detail captured by the camera. Manipulation and adjustment of contact prints in the darkroom is limited however. Because Silver is very sensitive to light, enlargements can be made from negatives, and using an enlarger the photographer can make many adjustments in the darkroom. The selective addition and subtraction of light from areas of the print is called dodging and burning and these terms are preserved today in tools of the same name in Adobe Photoshop.
Use of multiple enlargers allows the combination of several negatives into one multiple image print, a technique pioneered by Jerry Uelsmann. All of my multiple image prints are make in the darkroom and do not involve digital processing.
