Why I Still Print Black & White on Gelatin Silver Paper (And Why You Should Too)
I’ve received quite a few questions lately about why I still print my black-and-white photographs on traditional gelatin silver paper.
In an age in which almost everything passes through a digital workflow, working with fiber-based paper, liquid chemistry, trays and a darkroom may seem unnecessarily complicated.
It is.
And I still think the result is better.
A Digression on the Analog Vezzo
There is something I genuinely don’t understand, particularly among younger photographers: the renewed obsession with shooting film, followed almost immediately by scanning the negative and printing it digitally.
Why?
If you choose film because you believe there is something particular about the analog photographic process, why stop halfway?
To me, shooting film and never entering a darkroom risks becoming an analog vezzo—a stylistic affectation. The camera is analog, the film is analog, the grain is analog, perhaps even the scratches are proudly analog, and then the negative is scanned and the rest of the process becomes digital.
Of course, you can make an excellent pigment print from a scanned negative. That isn’t the point.
The point is that if you shoot black-and-white film and have never printed your negatives on silver paper, you have experienced only part of what that medium can do.
Try it.
Make a good gelatin silver print. Put it next to the digital print. Look at the blacks, the middle tones, the skin, and what happens when light hits the surface.
Then decide.
What I Use
For my 30 × 40 cm and 50 × 60 cm editions, my absolute preference for years was Bergger Prestige Variable NB, a neutral-tone variable-contrast bromide paper.
Unfortunately, Bergger discontinued it.
I now work with Bergger Variable CB. Anna and Bruno, who print my work, use a neutral developer at a considerably stronger concentration: 1+7 instead of the usual 1+9.
Development becomes extremely fast, and the result gives the photographs exactly what I am looking for: a subtle warmth in the skin while retaining beautiful, deep blacks.
It took experimentation to get there. And this is precisely part of what I value in silver printing. The paper is not simply something onto which an image is transferred. Paper, developer, dilution, filtration, exposure, burning, dodging and development all participate in making the final photograph.
For my smaller 20 × 24 cm open-edition prints, we use Ilford Multigrade. I find it somewhat more contrasty than the Bergger, but at the smaller size the difference bothers me much less.
Can a Digital Photograph Be a Gelatin Silver Print?
Absolutely.
I sometimes hear the argument that if the original photograph is digital, the final print cannot be a “real” gelatin silver print.
That is simply incorrect.
A gelatin silver print is an image formed in a light-sensitive silver-halide emulsion suspended in gelatin, exposed onto photographic paper and chemically developed, fixed and washed.
The original image can come from a film negative or from a digital file photographically exposed onto silver paper.
In the latter case, it is commonly called a gelatin silver gelatin print or digital gelatin silver print.
The distinction matters when describing the process, and I believe in being precise about it. But the final object is still a photograph made of silver, not ink.
That distinction matters to me much more.
And Color? And C-Prints?
Color is another story.
I have tried repeatedly to get color C-prints that satisfied me. I must have worked with six different labs, and the results ranged from disappointing to mediocre.
I eventually gave up.
This isn’t because the chromogenic process is inherently mediocre—it obviously isn’t. There are magnificent C-prints. But the golden age of the great chromogenic printer has largely disappeared. The combination of perfectly maintained chemistry, calibration and, above all, a technician with extraordinary eyes and decades of experience has become increasingly difficult to find.
For color, I now print with a Canon pigment printer on Hahnemühle paper.
And here I have no nostalgia whatsoever.
The results are superb. The gamut is enormous, the control is extraordinary, and the archival characteristics are excellent. For my color photographs, pigment printing gives me what I want.
But for Black & White, Silver Wins
Here I have very little hesitation.
A superb pigment print can be beautiful. I am not arguing otherwise.
But put it beside an equally well-made gelatin silver print and, for me, there is no competition.
The silver print has a physical presence that ink does not reproduce. The blacks have density without simply becoming black holes. The middle tones have an extraordinary continuity. Skin has substance. Highlights seem to emerge from the paper rather than merely being represented on it.
And then there is something harder to quantify.
The print glows.
Call it depth, luminosity, surface, chemistry, or simply the way silver interacts with light. I care about what happens when the print is in front of me, and this is what happens.
This is why I still choose a process involving trays, chemistry, time and the judgment of skilled printers, when a pigment printer could produce an image in a few minutes.
No, it’s not nostalgia.
No, it isn’t fetishism.
And it certainly isn’t because analog is fashionable again.
I print black and white on gelatin silver paper because, after everything else I have tried, I still think it makes the most beautiful black-and-white photograph.
