In-Camera Processing by classic LF "Street Photographers"

A long time ago some photographers experimented with using Cibachrome direct positive paper. It was very slow compared to films and some trial and error was needed when it came to using color correction filters. Another method was using regular b&w printing paper instead of film. You would develop the film in paper developer to make a paper negative. When it was rinsed and completely dry you would then put it on top of a new piece of photo paper, emulsion side touching emulsion side, and make a contact print. The exposures could be long because you were shining light through the back of the paper negative. This method worked better with graded paper because you couold more easily vary the contrast that way. There is a digital camera with a built in printer which allows you to make prints on the spot. I don't know whether it works as fast as the old Polaroid SX-70 but you can always print the digital files to make larger sizes later with a separate printer.

Kodak offered a camera-speed, very light weight direct positive B&W paper as late as the Seventies.

Probably D-19 processed (somebody can correct me). In the US it was used for passports (as well by nightclub "cigarette girls"). When the State Department authorized Polaroid (also in the Seventies)its market vanished.

There's currently some in 8X10 on 'bay ...search: kodak direct positive paper ...it wasn't a rarity.

The Kodak paper is what was used in the 1930's then. A family friend, long deceased, told me about how photographers would stand on the street corner with a 4x5 Graphic. They would take your picture, and he said they would use the dark cloth to process the print in old tomato cans! One for developer and one for fixer. You had it within 5 minutes. Who needs digital?

I have photos from Harbin China (a Russian outpost) from the twenties/thirties on material that looks like Direct Positive looked (was quite OK tonally). Some are partially hand-colored. They feel like a new dollar bill, same sort of weight, stiffer, but tending to curl. For whatever reason these didn't yellow much. Some of the family in question, Russian exiles, perhaps Jews, were photographers. Most of their photos were on more substantial material. They were big into photographing parties.

Re: Nicaragua. The image used in this new book is recent, as of 2005 anyway. People are still doing this. There you can buy a Polaroid for from a city park photographer for a $1 or so. This process presumably costs less than that. It might not involve photo paper since the Nicaraguan family with a monopoly on Kodak products charges about double what things are in the U.S. My guess is the paper is that the process is perhaps homemade with coated papers and chemicals gotten from a pharmacy. Just a guess though.

If you're seriously interested, go there and ask them. Not a bad suggestion, eh?

See the back-issues of Pop Photo (March, 2000) for an article by L.C. Gooch, "Instant Street Photos, Havana-Style". A short 2-page article with several good photos of what is made and by what kind of camera. Also, the June issue of the same magazine has a follow-up comment by someone in the "Contact Sheet" section. He describes the true history, and includes some vintage advertisement of the cameras in question. This sort of work/photographers can still be seen in parts of Mexico and South America. I have seen people doing this sort of work (exact same, I cannot say) in the last 5 years in: Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. It is not popular, but many bigger towns in more isolated parts of these countries often have one guy in Central Park doing something like this.

I suspect it's relatively easy to treat conventional B&W photo paper to become direct positive, speeding it. Kodak did something along that line.

I vaguely recall something about iodine fumes in this context. That could also be a very dangerous fantasy. Iodine's hard to get in quantity in the US, but not in Latin America, Mexico etc.

The last people I knew to use Direct Positive in the US were photo teachers who used it in Calumet view cameras.

I read about something like this a while back, but in India - blog article here.

Basically it sounds like they're taking a regular negative, but on standard (multigrade?) photo paper, developing it inside the camera box (could be any standard dev, like Dektol, which wouldn't take that long), and then they've rigged a holder in front of the same taking lens, at the optimal distance for taking a "regular" picture of the negative image - which would yield a positive (unless I'm grossly mistaken), again using standard photo paper, and again developed in standard chems.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and all that. Would be interested to try something like this - sounds like something unique and quick enough to do in a little booth on the folk festival circuit or something - of course, unless it's published, you'd have to figure out the distances to do this, etc, yourself.