Before oil painting was invented the state-of-the-art of painting was egg tempera. Egg tempera uses egg yolk as a binder and vehicle for the pigment and is a very unforgiving medium to paint with. You don’t find many artists working with this medium because you can get (more or less) the same effect using oil paint which is cheaper, easier and faster. Once oil painting was invented most painters started using the superior medium (it was a gradual process of course, things moved very slowly in 15th century europe).

Strange thing is, you can still find people using egg tempera (there is even a Society of Tempera Painters) though it’s an archaic, technically-dead medium with a superior subsitute.

With the help of digital photography darkroom photo printing seems to be heading the way of egg tempera (according to the NYTimes.com).

[…] Mr. Megargee hopes that the darkroom will endure. “Platinum printing is still around, despite the convenience of silver printing,” he said. “What we do in the lab here, in 15 years, may be a very specialized area, like platinum printing. But it will still be viable. I don’t see the craft not being here.”

Is darkroom printing fast becoming a dead technique practiced by a few die-hard revivalists? permanent link to this post