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Faux Snow: A Winter Exhibit of Manipulated Photographs from the American Museum of Photography

An Exhibit of Albumen Prints from Wet Plate Collodion Negatives made in studios but showing snow, snowballs, snowfalls and winter sports

William Notman (Montreal, Canada 1826-1891)

Four Winter Sportsmen

Albumen print, 4 x 5.5 inches, circa 1866

Notman pioneered the creation of outdoor scenes in the studio. His work was well known in Canada and the United States, thanks in large part to publications in the widely-circulated magazine The Philadelphia Photographer. A number of techniques invented by William Notman can be seen in this composition:

The effect of deep snow was created by the judicious placing of sheep’s fleece in the foreground set slightly out of focus. Hard packed snow in camp or snow on clothes or branches was actually a sprinkling of coarse grained salt… Falling snow was created by spraying white paint into the air and passing the glass plate negative through the cloud as it fell. In his advertisements, William Notman claimed these techniques as his own invention and had them patented.

–Stanley G. Triggs, William Notman: The Stamp of A Studio (Art Gallery of Ontario and The Coach House Press, 1985)

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