Alt Processes
What are they?
Alternative processes are those not generally practiced as commercial consumer-grade artistic formats or media. These processes have varying degrees of archivability, and in some instances are more permanent and stable than those processes now generally used in analog photography. The term may colloquially be applied to all photographic processes prior to the development of modern emulsion-coated films and papers. The appearances obtainable with alternative processes are oftentimes coppied into digital platforms due to their very aesthetic appeal.
Alternative Processes are steeped with tradition and date back to the very beginning of photographic history, with Sir William Herschel producing the very first cyanotypes as early as the late 1830s. Although this process was widely cast to the wayside by most artists and photographers of the time, it has now seen much resurgence as a medium of fine art prints by alternative process photographers. Other mediums of alternative process include those light-sensitive salts of platinum and palladium, which by the end of the 19th century had become the preeminent permanent medium with which to print a photographic image, Caffenol, Carbon Prints, Gum Prints, Wetplate Collodion, Dry Plate, Van Dyke Brown, and a number of other processes, many of which have only cursory historical experimentation.