A Portrait: Printed on Velox Special Rough Photographic Paper

Advertising, Flowers, Portrait: Woman, Supports

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 21.8 x 15.9 cm June
Support Dimensions: 27.7 x 21.5 cm

An original Velox photographic print, which shows extensive silvering in the shadows due to age, appeared as the June, 1899 supplement to The Photographic Times.

Velox was the first commercially successful photographic paper invented in 1893, was aptly named for the Latin word meaning swift or rapid, and was coated with gelatin silver chloride emulsion which allowed it to be developed with artificial light sources. Gaslight was an early illuminating source used to print it, and versions of the Velox brand after the Nepera Company was purchased by Eastman Kodak in 1899 advertised “Prints by Gaslight” on Velox packaging.

Professional photographer J.E. Watson was a founding member of the Detroit Camera Club in 1897 and is believed to have operated a studio there since the early 1860’s. By 1900 he had moved to New York City. (Wilson’s Photographic Magazine) The following is a known listing of Detroit studio addresses for Watson as cited in Langdon’s List of 19th & Early 20th Century Photographers. (LangdonRoad.com) :

WATSON, J. E.

Watson, J. E, photographer, 41 & 43 Monroe Ave., Detroit, MI (early 1870s) cdv image; J. E. Watson, photographer, 2364 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI (1870s) cdv image identified as “Thos Taber/Faber of Flint, Michigan” jpg in gallery; J. E. Watson, photographer, 41 and 43 Monroe Ave., Detroit, MI (1880) (1881) Weeks’ Detroit City Directory; J. E. Watson, photographer, 148 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI (1895) (1897) (1898) Polk’s Detroit City Directory; J. E. Watson, photogr, 148 Woodward, Detroit, MI (1896) City Directory p 1881