In January 2020, Harvard students attended a day-and-a-half Photo Technology Workshop focused on salted paper prints, an early photographic process. Participants had the opportunity to study these rare images (including some of the earliest photographs ever created) from the Fine Arts Library, Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University Archives, and Houghton Library. Harvard curators and conservators were on hand to provide background about the collections.

2002 Students look at prints https://preservation.library.harvard.edu

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Introduced in 1839, salt prints are the result of the first negative-to-positive photographic process, from which most nineteenth- and twentieth-century photographic processes were derived. Harvard Library has been involved in a multi-year initiative to preserve, enhance access to, and publish collections of salt prints at the University. The project has resulted in the identification of approximately 10,000 salt prints representing the artistic techniques, technical practices, and varied uses of the medium by more than 100 English, European, and American photographers.

More information about salt prints at Harvard can be found at:

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/saltprintsatharvard/home