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Portable darkroom tent


This example of a photographer’s portable collodion darkroom tent was owned and used by George M. Bretz, of Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Wet-plate collodion was a light-sensitive solution used as an emulsion to coat glass plates, which were then quickly placed in cameras. An image was exposed and immediately developed. An itinerate photographer or landscape photographer traveling extensively would have used a portable darkroom tent like the Bretz one shown. Wet-plate collodion photography was popular from the mid-1850s to the early 1880s, when dry plates were introduced.


Division of Information, Technology and Society, Photographic History
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Behring Center
Gift of Mr. George M. Bretz

 

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