Bailey had just happened. Don McCullin was in his intense period of war and documentary work. The Sunday Times colour supplement, recently started, gave a platform for often gritty realistic work like this. Journalists like Harold Evans recognised and gave openings for the impact and realism of hand held 35mm photojournalism. In the art field, virtually unrecognised in the UK but thriving in the USA, Ansel Adams worked with an almost clinical eye in the perfection of his cool fine prints.

There was no such thing as resin coated paper. The fibre base (a tern unknown in those days) paper for prints was almost universally known as 'bromide paper' - often single weight. And the standard printing papers in all production environments -, press, commercial, industrial, P.R. - were silver bromide papers. They were faster than chloride or chlorobromide papers. Big Kodak rotary drum dryers and glazers hummed round outside most professional darkrooms. But it wasn't just the higher productivity bromide paper gave in quicker throughput, the whole fashion was for the neutral to cold black tone it gave. After all, the welcoming warmth of chloride didn't suit at all the social deprivation or war torn limbs and minds featured in so many pictures. They demanded the cold realism of bromide.

We should realise that different colours are produced simply by the light's reaching the eye having a different wavelengths. Silver chloride is inherently finer grained than silver bromide. The silver grains in paper emulsions, unlike film, unenlarged, are far too small to be seen by the unaided human eye. However, the light rays we view when seeing a print are reflected back from the paper base of the print back through the emulsion interrupted at microscopic intervals by the silver grains. This changes light rays' wave length. Those passing through the finer chloride grains appear warmer, and those through the larger bromide grains colder. Of course, the more the emulsion is developed the more the grains clump together, thus becoming larger, and thus appearing colder. Generally speaking, the more we develop any print, the cooler its appearance should become.

Continue...