Old photographs figure large in my second novel, Imprint and Inheritance. Colleen shows Julia old photos from 1920 – 1960 to reminisce, and one particular photo is the inciting incident for the novel. Most were black and white, but the earliest photos were sepia-toned. As I wrote, I wondered if black-and-white photos turned sepia with age, or if they were created that way.

The word sepia comes from the Greek word for an ink extracted from European common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), of the reddish-brown hue. Turns out these are fascinating animals. Since cuttlefish squirt ink and camouflage themselves by moving pigment to different parts of their body, it made sense for early cultures to extract ink for their own use.

It turns out sepia toning was a separate step while printing photographs from the 1880s to the early 1900s. The photos started out black and white, but were toned to sepia by the photographer before the customer ever saw it. Not only did Sepia toning make the images warmer and more inviting (increasing in warmth with aging), but it fixed the photographic image on the paper for 50% longer. Because photographs were a luxury items and families usually had just a few to record their whole lives, reduced fading was worth the extra step.

Interestingly, the toning process can be done in the daylight once the prints are made in the darkroom. Initially, that was helpful when sodium sulfide was used, as it’s what gives rotten eggs their odor. Here’s a basic diagram of how silver particles (embedded within gelatin on the paper surface) are transformed during printing and sepia toning.

Nowadays film hobbyists and artists use thiourea for sepia toning, which doesn’t smell as much, but it’s still better used outside of the darkroom. Here’s a demo video if you’re curious how it’s done.

As photographic processes improved over time, sepia toning was no longer necessary to stabilize the image. As a result, black-and-white photos dominated from the 1930s through the 1960s. Color photography was available as early as the 1930s, but was not as common as hand coloration of black-and-white photos. In the 1970s, color dominated the printing market when it became more affordable.

Photographers still do sepia toning for artistic reasons, adding just a hint of sepia to a black-and-white photo, or completely converting to sepia of different intensities and tonalities. But because of its history, sepia tones evoke a sense of nostalgia. Nowadays you can create sepia toned images on your digital camera, with a bit of finessing on your smartphone, or after the fact using Lightroom/Photoshop with the click of a few buttons. 

Coney Island- 2023- Click to switch to black-and-white or sepia-tone. Which gives the greatest atmosphere of an earlier time?

Note: Photos are from the author’s family collection and may not be used without permission. The DaVinci image is from the public domain at Wikipedia.