A recent online talk by contemporary wet plate photographer Tony Richards for the Royal Photographic Society’s Historical Group happened at a timely moment.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheRoyalPhotographicSociety/videos
His presentation (‘Contemporary Wet Plate Collodion Photography’ / 2nd April 2024) coincided with the arrival in my collection of a second-hand book titled Photographic Recipes and Formulae.
As its title suggests, the book published in 1907 informs photographers about the basic principles of chemistry integral to taking photographs from the medium’s earliest days.
Its contents page (annotated ‘Croydon Library’ in an unknown hand) lists a total of ten sections starting with “Developers for Plates and Films” and working its way through various photographic processes.
Though traditional methods are an area of interest to photohistorians, mine in this particular book was prompted by a detail on its frontispiece: that of the credit ‘Compiled by Richard Penlake.’
As regular readers of the Pressphotoman blog will be aware, ‘Richard Penlake’ was a pen-name used by the photographer and author Percy R. Salmon FRPS (1872-1959).
In its catalogue, the British Library lists six titles credited to Richard Penlake, but this particular one seems to have escaped the Deposit Library system and has now been added to our growing family collection of his publications.
This is slightly surprising as the BL catalogue does include a Richard Penlake title, Trick Photography, by the same publisher, Marshall, Brookes & Chalkley, Ltd., of Harp Alley, Farringdon Street, London, EC, that appeared the previous year (1906).
Indeed, an advertisement for Trick Photography billed as “an amusing and instructive book” appears on the flyleaf of Photographic Recipes & Formulae.
This flurry of activity occurred at a point in Percy R. Salmon’s career when he had recently stepped down after five years as Editor of Photographic News, a weekly trade paper.
Instead, he was working as a freelance author producing articles and mass market handbooks aimed at amateur photographers.
It was a change that culminated in several popular titles including All About Photography (1925) published in multiple editions by Ward, Lock & Co., into the 1950s.
Pressphotoman 
Leave a comment