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How did albumen paper improve photographic prints?

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Alfred Stieglitz: Child with Striped Dress (Younger Raab Child) — History of photography *Child with Striped Dress (Younger Raab Child)*, autochrome photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, 1907; in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Introduced by Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard in 1850, albumen paper significantly advanced the quality of photographic prints during the 19th century.

By coating paper with egg white (albumen) before sensitizing it with silver salts, photographers achieved a glossy surface that notably improved the definition and clarity of the resulting image. This process allowed for fine-grained resolution and subtly graded tones, which made the prints highly prized.12

Because albumen paper was a slow printing-out medium—meaning it produced a visible image through direct exposure rather than chemical development—it provided a reliable method for creating positive prints from glass-plate negatives. Its ability to render detail with precision helped drive the popularity of new portrait formats, such as the carte-de-visite, which became a global phenomenon in the 1860s.2