The silver gelatin print is the standard black-and-white photographic process of the 20th century. Learn its history, chemistry, and why it defined fine art photography.
Every black-and-white photograph you have seen in a museum from the 20th century was almost certainly a silver gelatin print. Cartier-Bresson's street scenes, Ansel Adams's landscapes, Robert Capa's war photographs, Diane Arbus's portraits: all printed on paper coated with gelatin containing silver halides, developed in chemical solutions, and fixed for permanence. The silver gelatin print was the dominant photographic printing process from the 1890s until the late 20th century, and it is still produced today by a small number of manufacturers and darkroom practitioners who consider it the finest medium for black-and-white image-making.
A silver gelatin print is a photographic print made on paper coated with a gelatin emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halides, typically silver bromide or silver chloride. The paper is exposed to light through a negative (or projected from an enlarger), developed in chemical solutions to reduce the exposed silver halides to metallic silver, and fixed to remove the unexposed silver salts. The image consists of metallic silver particles suspended in a thin gelatin layer on the paper surface. Silver gelatin papers were produced in two types: printing-out papers (POP), where the image appears during exposure, and developing-out papers (DOP), where the image appears during chemical development. DOP papers became the dominant type from the 1900s onward.
This entry covers how silver gelatin prints work, their history, the photographers who defined the medium, and what modern conservation research has revealed about their material structure.
A typical baryta-coated, fiber-based silver gelatin print has four layers. At the bottom is the paper support, originally made from cotton rag and later from wood pulp. On top of the paper is the baryta layer, a coating of barium sulfate in gelatin that creates a smooth, white surface for the image. Above the baryta is the gelatin emulsion layer, containing the silver halide crystals that form the image. On top is a protective gelatin coating.
The print is made by projecting light through a negative onto the paper, either by contact printing (negative directly on paper) or by enlargement (negative projected through an enlarger lens). The exposed silver halides form a latent image. The paper is then developed in a chemical solution, typically containing metol and hydroquinone, which reduces the exposed silver halides to metallic silver. The unexposed silver halides are dissolved in a fixing bath of sodium thiosulfate. The print is washed to remove residual chemicals and dried.
The image consists of filamentary silver particles suspended in the gelatin layer. The size and distribution of these particles determine the tonal range and surface quality of the print. Fine-grain papers produce smooth tonal transitions. Coarse-grain papers produce a more graphic, high-contrast look. Warm-tone papers, modified during manufacturing to restrict silver particle growth during development, produce slightly browner prints.
The Getty Conservation Institute's Atlas of Analytical Signatures of Photographic Processes provides the definitive technical description of silver gelatin prints, including their historical timeline and chemical signature. Read the full publication at Getty Conservation Institute.
No single person invented the silver gelatin process. It emerged from the work of several chemists and photographers in the 1870s and 1880s. Richard Leach Maddox published the first practical silver gelatin emulsion in 1871, using gelatin as a carrier for silver bromide. Josef Marie Eder, Giuseppe Pizzighelli, and Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney contributed to the refinement of gelatin emulsions through the 1880s. The baryta layer, which gives silver gelatin papers their smooth white surface, was introduced by Jose Martinez-Sanchez and Jean Laurent in 1866.
Silver gelatin papers became commercially available in the 1880s and rapidly replaced earlier printing papers. The POP silver gelatin papers were used first, but DOP papers, which required much shorter exposure times and chemical development, took over from the 1900s onward. By the 1930s, silver gelatin DOP papers were the standard for both professional and amateur photography. They remained dominant until color photography overtook black-and-white in the 1960s and 1970s.
A 2025 study published in Heritage analyzed fiber-based DOP sample sets from Ilford (circa 1950) and Kodak (1972) using multi-analytical techniques, revealing significant differences in base tint, surface gloss, fillers, and fiber content between manufacturers and periods. The study found iron (III) oxide-hydroxide pigment in Ilford cream papers and anatase titanium dioxide in a baryta-less Ilford sample. Read the study at MDPI Heritage.
Adams is the photographer most associated with the silver gelatin print as a fine art medium. His prints, made on papers from the Kodak and later Ilford ranges, are known for their full tonal range from deep black to bright white with detail preserved at both ends. Adams used the Zone System to control the negative, and then used dodging, burning, and varying paper grades to control the print. His Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico exists in multiple prints made over decades, each with slightly different tonal interpretation, all on silver gelatin paper.
Cartier-Bresson's street photographs, printed on silver gelatin paper, demonstrate the medium's ability to render the full range of gray tones that give black-and-white photography its expressive power. His prints, made by himself and later by master printers like Voja Mitrovic at the Picto lab in Paris, have a tonal warmth and depth that digital reproduction cannot match. The Getty's publication on silver gelatin prints uses a Cartier-Bresson print as its example image.
Capa's war photographs, including his coverage of the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, were printed on silver gelatin paper. The tonal range of the silver gelatin print was what made these images legible in the pages of Life magazine, where the full gray scale from black to white could be reproduced on the printing press.
Arbus used silver gelatin paper for her portraits of people on the margins of American society. Her prints, made with deep blacks and full tonal range, give her subjects a physical presence that a flatter printing medium would not achieve. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the largest collection of Arbus's silver gelatin prints.
Silver gelatin prints are vulnerable to several forms of deterioration. Silver mirroring, a bluish metallic sheen that appears on the surface of older prints, is caused by the migration of silver ions to the surface and their reduction to metallic silver. Acid attack from acidic mounting materials can cause yellowing and embrittlement of the paper support. A 2024 study published in the International Journal of Conservation Science evaluated deacidification methods for acidified mounted silver gelatin prints, finding that gellan gum gel loaded with barium hydroxide yielded the best results. Read the study at International Journal of Conservation Science.
The silver gelatin print is the standard medium for film photography and is closely associated with the Zone System for tonal control. It evolved from earlier processes like the calotype and salted paper prints, and it is typically made using contact printing or projection printing. For more on the history of photography, read our post on Ansel Adams and the Zone System, or explore our guide to Cartier-Bresson and the decisive moment.
Silver gelatin prints are in every major photography collection. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London all have extensive holdings. When you look at a silver gelatin print, notice the depth of the blacks and the range of grays. The print should have detail in the darkest shadows and texture in the brightest highlights.
If you want to make silver gelatin prints yourself, you need a darkroom, an enlarger, photographic paper, and chemical solutions. Ilford and a few other manufacturers still produce silver gelatin paper. The process is the same one that Adams and Cartier-Bresson used. For more on the broader context of photography, read our entries on the Zone System and daguerreotype, or explore our post on photography as fine art.
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