Image: the public-domain reference file. Your print is a hand-made interpretation of it, produced at the studio in Platinum-palladium — its matter and tonality are its own.
Clarence H. White · 1897
The Readers (Letitia Felix and Ada Follett)
- Year
- 1897
- Original process
- Platinum print
- Held at
- Library of Congress
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- 1897
- Original held at
- Library of Congress
- Public domain
- Since 1996 (CPI L.123-1)
- Printer
- Maison Picturale — Paris 20e studio
- Lead time
- Hand-made · 3 to 5 weeks
Maison Picturale reinterpretation in platinum-palladium
About this work
Two young women — Letitia Felix and Ada Follett, White's recurrent Newark, Ohio models — absorbed in reading inside a domestic interior, lit by oblique window light that grazes their hands, faces and printed pages. Made in 1897 during White's bookkeeper years in Newark, the platinum print belongs to the foundational moment of his pictorialism, before his selection by Stieglitz for the Photo-Secession in 1902. The composition is exemplary of White's signature economy: two figures, one light source, a horizontal axis of attention along the book, and a tonal scale that uses the platinum paper's long mid-tones to render fabric, skin and paper in a single continuous register. Where Demachy and Puyo sought painterly intervention, White worked the negative and the natural light, treating the dawn-and-dusk hours of his Newark life as the true material of his practice. The Library of Congress holds the platinum print under LCCN 2003653996 (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.), and the image has entered the U.S. public domain since 1996. For Maison Picturale, The Readers is a reference for our platine-palladium workshops in Paris: the print's oblique-light intimism, achieved historically with sensitised platinum-iron paper, is reproducible today on 640 g/m² cotton paper with the non-toxic platine-palladium chemistry reformulated by Vision Picturale — preserving the warm-cool tonal duality of the original without the legacy hazards of historical platinum sensitiser handling. The 1897 dating predates Stieglitz's direct selection of White for the Photo-Secession by five years and confirms The Readers as a foundational document of pre-Secession American pictorialism, alongside The Bubble (1898) and Spring: A Triptych (1898).
Reference file : Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
Procédé Transposition
Print like Clarence H. White today — without the toxics.
Each Maison Picturale print is a material reinterpretation of the image. Three readings of the same work — the original, its closest transposition, and a creative transposition into another procédé.
Noble metals — platinum and palladium — on 640 gsm cotton paper. The longest tonal range in all analog photography.
MP procédé — reformulated non-toxic chemistry, signed by Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour.
View the procédéHistory of the process
The platinotype was invented in 1873 by the British engineer William Willis, who patented the process that same year under the name Platinotype Process. In 1879 Willis founded the Platinotype Company, which sold platinum-sensitised papers across Europe for several decades. Palladium was introduced in the early twentieth century as an economical variant, giving nothing away on tonal quality.
Platinum-palladium quickly became the process of choice for the masters of fine-art photography. Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Frederick H. Evans made it their signature process, and their original prints held at the Royal Photographic Society in London, at George Eastman House in Rochester and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York still testify to platinum's tonal perfection. Stieglitz wrote that platinum offered a wider scale of greys than any other process.
Our approach
Every platinum-palladium print made at the studio at 1 passage Dagorno is a unique piece in a very limited edition, intended for serious collectors and institutions. The cost of platinum and palladium salts — noble metals whose prices follow the financial markets — makes this our premium process. Each print is prepared, sensitised and developed by hand by our master printers.
Our 640 gsm 100% cotton satin watercolour paper suits platinum-palladium particularly well: its pure cotton fibre, free of optical brighteners and alkaline additives, lets the metal salts embed deep in the paper, and its satin surface fully reveals the process's unique warm tonality and exceptional tonal scale.
Inside our studio
1 Passage Dagorno, Paris 20e. Each print is hand-crafted by Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour, using Vision Picturale's reformulated non-toxic chemistry. Limited edition, signed and numbered.
Commission this print
- Hand-printed and signed by Tristan Sidem & Raphaël Lebas de Lacour
- Reformulated non-toxic chemistry (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Limited edition, numbered, certificate of authenticity
- 1 Passage Dagorno studio, Paris 20e
- Delivery 3 to 5 weeks · ships worldwide from France
Formats and prices
- ProcédéPlatinum-palladium
- Coquille44 × 56 cm200 €
- Jésus56 × 76 cm400 €
- Grand Aigle76 × 112 cm600 €
- Univers100 × 140 cm1 200 €
Firm prices: they follow from the procédé and the paper format, as on our Process pages. 100% cotton paper, 640 gsm, deckled edges. Which formats are offered depends on the resolution of the reference file we hold for this work.
Contemporary print after a work in the public domain (CPI L.123-1, 70 years post-mortem). Hand-crafted reinterpretation by Maison Picturale's master printers — this is not an original vintage by the master. The mention 'after [Master]' is systematic on the print and on the certificate of authenticity.
