professional photographer, announced in the Argus in September 1854 that he intended to take portraits in Melbourne by the collodion process. This is a very early example of a photographer offering collodion-positive photographs (ambrotypes) commercially in the Australian colonies and, understandably, the reporter on the Argus displayed some confusion about the technique: 'Mr. Talbot, the inventor of the improved process, has, we believe, abandoned his patent, and, if we correctly understand Mr. Scarlett’s announcement, the introduction of this new field of portrait-taking will be a novelty in the field of colonial art’. The new medium was labelled 'a great improvement on the invention of Mons. Daguerre’—which the ambrotype undoubtedly was. But the process on which Talbot had abandoned his patent in 1852 was the calotype, the well-established salted paper process. As Scarlett’s advertisement makes clear, he was using Scott Archer’s process, given freely to the world in 1851.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
