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➼ History & Context
The historic Houston flood of 1935 lasted for 3 days and wreaked untold damage across the city. December 7, 1935, bayous already filled with runoff from hill country rainfall, heavy rains poured over Houston and downtown started flooding.
The waters reached 8 ft on Milam, rose all the way to the Heights, and took out all the bridges downtown. The Capitol Avenue Bridge, despite normally being 40 ft above the water, the railroads and central water station were all inundated by the floodwaters, and every fire pumping station in the area was knocked out.
When the Yellow Cab company caught fire, the Houston firefighters had to drive straight into the water, sacrificing their trucks to the flood in order to combat the rising flames and pumping water straight from the streets around them.
The flood lasted three days, and by the end 20-40% of buildings downtown were lost, knocked off their foundations or broken into pieces by the waters. Seven people died.
Engineers later concluded that the Magnolia Bridge, the 1912 construction by the Magnolia Brewing Co that crossed Buffalo Bayou at Louisiana St, exacerbated the situation as water backed up behind its narrow base. The Magnolia Brewery itself, along with the city archives, city post office, farmers’ market, and the MK&T railroad were all destroyed by the waters.
The 1935 Houston flood revolutionized the way Texas thought about flooding. The Harris County Flood Control District was established and reservoirs were constructed. Even into the 21st century you could still see pieces of the old Magnolia Bridge under the Louisiana Street Bridge, and parts of the old monolithic brewery remain as the Magnolia Ballroom and Brewery Tap.
➼ Gelatin Silver Printing
Gelatin silver photographic printing process is the most commonly used chemical process in black & white photography and the basis for modern color photography processes. First introduced in 1871, gelatin silver printing became widespread in the 1890s.
Exposure to a negative allows the forming of an invisible, latent image as silver halides form small specks of silver metal on the surface of the paper wherever light strikes. The clearest parts of the negative therefore create the most silver, and become the darkest areas of the final print.
With immersion in a development fluid, the latent silver particles become visible as metallic silver, and the strength, temperature, and time left in the fluid gives the photographer control over the visible contrast of the final image.
A stop bath removes any remaining development fluid before the fixer step which removes any remaining unexposed silver halide. Following a water bath, the image is fixed within a clear gelatin layer.
Sometimes photographers would then add a toning layer using selenium, gold, or sulfur, for aesthetic purposes as well as aiding permanence.
Finished gelatin silver prints are composed of four layers: the paper base, formerly made from cotton and wood pulp since WWI; the baryta coating that smooths the surface of the paper and prepares it to receive a clean image; the gelatin binder holding the silver grains of the photographic image; and the protective overcoat layer of hardened gelatin.
As they age, silverprint photographs can deteriorate from the silver particles oxidizing, which can lead to yellowing and fading, though toning increases its resilience.
