Photographer Sigismund Blumann considered Athos, Porthos, and Aramis his favorite photograph. Alternatively titled The Three Guardsmen, the reworking of the titles plays off the 1844 French historical adventure novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, in which the 3 main characters are known as the three inseparables. In this, Blumann has a bit of fun projecting and substituting the names of the novels musketeers: Athos, Porthos and Aramis, for a standing row of towering redwood trees in Washington’s Rainier National Park. This fine exhibition print was done in a process the photographer called a pastelograph, with the following details.

Simply a hand-colored gelatin silver photograph on matt surface Opal V Eastman Kodak paper favored by photographers such as  Yousuf Karsh, a “Pastelograph” was a darkroom process invention of Blumann. So enamored by his creation, several of his finished prints, including this example, bear the following printed label on the mount verso:

A PASTELOGRAPH

is a photographic print made on Opal V Paper

(Eastman Kodak Company)

made in the prescribed way and hand-colored with

Nacco Dyes

(Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation)

Processed and heat treated with

Kandar

(Negatauch Chemical)