Thomas Mead: Bromoil as a Second Form of Photography
Thomas Mead: Bromoil as a Second Form of Photography
Bromoil is often regarded as one of the most historical of photographic processes. Its name evokes the early twentieth century, hand work, brush, pigment, and a print that seems to resist the mechanical character of photography. Thomas Mead’s contemporary practice suggests something much more interesting. Bromoil can be more than a reconstruction of an old process.
Mead does not treat it as a technological relic. He is not trying to reproduce the original chemistry, does not consider himself a purist, and deliberately works with contemporary materials. Over many years, he has experimented with substitutes for materials that are no longer readily available and has developed methods of his own. He describes this primarily as adapting the process to what is available today, while acknowledging that some of his solutions might reasonably be regarded as his own versions of bromoil.¹
This makes his practice particularly relevant to the history of photography. The question is not whether contemporary bromoil is “faithful” to its historical form. The more interesting question is: what happens when a historical process is taken up by a contemporary artist and used to develop a personal visual language?
From reproduction to personal expression
Mead usually begins relatively close to the original photograph. His first attempts allow him to discover how a particular image behaves within the bromoil process. Only then does he decide whether the image can be pushed further, toward what he calls **“self expression.”**²
This distinction is important.
For him, bromoil is not simply a printing technique. It is a way of discovering the potential of an image.
At a certain point, the photograph ceases to be merely what was recorded. Mead looks for the possibility of turning it into something more: an altered, more personal and less reproducible image.
This corresponds closely with one of the most revealing documents produced by the Pictorialist milieu. In the December 1913 issue of Platinum Print, the text Government by Process criticized photographers who allowed chemical procedures to take control of the image. The problem was not the process itself, but the point at which the process began to make decisions on behalf of the photographer.³
Mead takes the opposite approach.
Bromoil does not tell him what the photograph should become.
He tries to take the process to the point where the photograph becomes a vehicle for his own visual language.
Bromoil as a meeting point between photography and painting
Mead describes bromoil as a combination of two things that matter deeply to him: photography and the hands-on creation of something new. He compares this to painting, not because he wants to imitate a painting, but because he values the physical act of working directly on the image through hand, ink, texture and successive decisions.⁴
This distinction is also historically important.
Pictorialism has often been described as an attempt to make photography resemble painting. The period sources tell a more complicated story. In the first issue of Platinum Print, the editors emphasized “newness of conception” while retaining “photographic qualities.” In March 1914, Edward R. Dickson even defended what he called “straight photography,” provided that it retained the spirit of Pictorialism.⁵
A more accurate description would therefore be that Pictorialism sought to expand the scope of personal intervention within the photographic medium.
That is precisely where Mead’s practice becomes relevant as a contemporary development of the same problem.
The hand does not illustrate the photograph. It helps create it
For Mead, the most important feature of bromoil is not softness or tonal character. It is the fact that the image must be physically worked by hand.
This physical intervention is one of the sources of uniqueness. Even when an artist tries to recreate the same print, the result will not be identical. Each realization is a new relationship between the matrix, ink, tools, pressure, surface and decisions made during printing.⁶
In this respect, bromoil fits well with Daniel Rubinstein’s understanding of photography not simply as a finished image but as a process of transformation in which materiality is part of the formation of the work.⁷
Bromoil therefore makes something visible that can easily disappear in digital image culture: the presence of the making process.
We do not see only the result.
The work retains traces of the fact that someone physically made it.
“I am absolutely not a purist”
This is one of the most revealing elements of Mead’s account.
He has no interest in reconstructing historical materials and chemistry simply because they are historically correct. He points to a practical problem: some traditional materials have largely disappeared. Bromide paper is increasingly difficult to obtain, and many of the original inks are no longer manufactured. Mead has therefore had to search for contemporary substitutes and test them through trial and error.⁸
This creates an interesting situation.
The historical process is no longer a museum object.
It becomes a living technology that has to change in order to survive.
This is particularly relevant when set against the history recorded in Platinum Print. In February 1915, Alvin Langdon Coburn described Malcolm Arbuthnot as having developed his own way of working with gum. Walter Benington developed a distinctive practice of large, multi-coated gum prints, to the point that Coburn considered his work immediately recognizable.⁹
This is an important historical precedent.
Developing one’s own version of a process does not necessarily mean abandoning tradition. It can be a way of keeping the tradition alive.
The history of a process as material for experimentation
Mead says that it took him three years before he was able to produce his first successful bromoil. Only after that did he begin to experiment and develop his own solutions.¹⁰
This experience is central to his understanding of the medium. Bromoil is a skill developed through time, failure, repetition and patience.
This can be compared with Paul L. Anderson’s position in 1914. Anderson distinguished technical training from the subjective capacity for observation and composition. Technique, in his view, was necessary, but it existed to serve expression rather than replace it.¹¹
Mead adds a distinctly contemporary dimension: the time required to master the process becomes part of the value of the practice itself.
Bromoil begins to shape the way the photograph is made
One of Mead’s most revealing examples concerns cloudy skies.
He explains that he will deliberately photograph a subject beneath a cloudy sky because the uneven structure gives the ink something to adhere to. A blown-out, featureless sky would leave an essentially blank field. Clouds, by contrast, provide a non-uniform texture that allows him to manipulate the image extensively without destroying its underlying integrity.¹²
This is a crucial point.
The bromoil process does not begin after photography.
It begins to influence the act of photographing itself.
The photographer does not simply make an image and only afterwards decide what to do with it. He already knows, at the moment of exposure, what the later process will require.
Bromoil therefore becomes part of the entire production chain: photographing, selecting conditions, preparing the material, making the matrix and working manually on the final image.
This fits well with contemporary understandings of photography as a process rather than simply the instant when the shutter is released.
From negative to image
Photographic theory often assumes that the negative contains information which is subsequently transferred to paper.
Mead’s practice suggests something different.
The negative has a particular material potential.
Clouds, light, texture and tonal structure are not simply records of reality. They become conditions for the later work with ink.
The negative is therefore not merely a record.
It is a blueprint for a future print.
This has a strong historical parallel. Anderson argued that a negative intended for gum had to be constructed with the later printing process in mind.¹³
Mead does something similar, although under very different technological conditions.
Repetition and discovery
Mead does not reject control. Sometimes he aims for a predictable result. At other times, he wants to see where the image will take him.¹⁴
This is an interesting position between control and chance.
It is not a romantic belief in the “beauty of error.”
Variation matters only when the artist knows how to work with it.
In this respect, Mead’s approach resonates with an important debate among contemporary practitioners of historical processes. Galina Manikova, for example, rejects the idea that a mastered process must be unpredictable; experience, in her view, can make a process repeatable and controlled. Mead takes a more flexible position: sometimes predictability is the goal; sometimes discovery is.
These are not necessarily contradictory positions.
Both depend on mastery of the process.
Only then can an artist decide how much control to retain.
The invisible labor behind the finished image
One of the most revealing parts of Mead’s account concerns the way his work is received.
He points out that viewers often see only the finished image and have little idea of how much labor was required to make it. As a result, a technically difficult bromoil may receive little attention while a much easier image attracts the viewer’s gaze.¹⁵
This raises a broader question.
Does the value of a work depend on whether the labor invested in it is visible?
Obviously not.
A photograph does not become good simply because it took a hundred hours to make.
But in bromoil, time and labor are not merely production costs. They become part of the status of the work as a singular physical object.
In digital culture, an image can be copied instantly.
In bromoil, each print carries the history of its making.
The difference is therefore not simply between “analogue” and “digital.” It is a difference between an image functioning as a file and an image functioning as a material event.
What makes a contemporary bromoil different from a historical one?
Mead does not define contemporary bromoil through historical reconstruction.
He points out that some artists produce highly detailed works that can barely be distinguished from conventional photographic prints. His own preference is the opposite: strong grain, imperfection and a pronounced sense of material intervention. He believes this gives the work greater individuality.¹⁶
This is important because it shows that the same process can produce radically different visual languages.
The value of bromoil therefore does not reside in a single appearance.
It resides in the possibilities that the artist is able to exploit.
Once again, this brings us back to Anderson and to the position developed in Platinum Print: the medium should be chosen and shaped according to the needs of the artist rather than treated as a ready-made aesthetic formula.
Bromoil in relation to AI
The most uncompromising part of Mead’s response concerns the relationship between bromoil and digitally generated imagery.
His argument is not primarily about historical authenticity. What matters to him is the physical act of touching, manipulating and building the image by hand.¹⁷
His criticism of AI is, of course, a personal artistic opinion rather than an empirical argument.
The more interesting point lies elsewhere.
For Mead, the difference between a handmade image and a digital one is not simply that one is “real” and the other “false.”
The difference lies in how the image comes into being.
With AI, an image can be produced without any physical contact with a photographic material.
In bromoil, that physical contact is one of the foundations of the process.
Materiality is therefore not an accessory to photography.
It is part of what photography enables him to do as an artist.
Is bromoil still photography?
The question seems inevitable, but Mead’s practice suggests a more useful formulation.
Bromoil begins with a photographic image.
At the same time, its final appearance depends on manual work, ink, matrix, surface, texture and artistic decisions.
The result is neither simply a conventional photograph nor merely a painting.
It is a hybrid form whose identity depends on the entire process.
This is why Mead can be usefully read alongside Walter Benjamin and Daniel Rubinstein. Benjamin insisted on the material and technological history of photography, while Rubinstein proposes understanding photography through the processes and transformations that produce the visible image.¹⁸
Bromoil fits particularly well within such an understanding.
It is not simply “a photograph with paint added.”
It is a process through which photography becomes something else without ceasing to be photographic.
Thomas Mead and the contemporary life of a historical process
The most interesting fact about Mead is that he does not treat historical bromoil as a closed tradition.
His practice develops through:
experimentation with materials,
trial and error,
modification of the process,
adaptation to available materials,
development of a personal style,
and deliberate photographing with the later printing stage in mind.
This is not museum reconstruction.
It is the continuation of the history of a process.
Here his practice connects particularly well with Malcolm Arbuthnot and Walter Benington as described by Coburn in Platinum Print. They too were not simply following fixed recipes. Their individual ways of working with gum became part of their visual identity.¹⁹
Mead continues that logic under contemporary technological conditions.
What does this case tell us?
Thomas Mead shows that a historical process can remain contemporary not because it survives unchanged.
It can remain contemporary precisely because it can change.
Bromoil has survived because it can be adapted to new materials.
Because it can be learned again.
Because artists can find their own solutions.
And because it still answers an artistic need that the convenience of digital imagery does not automatically replace.
The most useful conclusion to draw from Mead’s practice may therefore be:
The contemporaneity of a historical photographic process does not depend on its fidelity to the past, but on its ability to generate new artistic decisions.
This shifts the focus from the history of photographic techniques to the history of how techniques are used.
And that is a very different story about bromoil.
Notes
Thomas Mead, responses to questions concerning his contemporary bromoil practice, correspondence with the author, August 2026.
Ibid.
“Government by Process,” Platinum Print: A Journal of Personal Expression, Vol. I, No. 2, December 1913, pp. 9–10.
Thomas Mead, responses to questions concerning his contemporary bromoil practice, August 2026.
Edward R. Dickson, “Notes on Pictorial Photography,” Platinum Print, Vol. I, No. 3, March 1914, pp. 6–10; “A Demand,” Platinum Print, Vol. I, No. 1, October 1913, p. 15.
Thomas Mead, responses to questions concerning his contemporary bromoil practice, August 2026.
Daniel Rubinstein, How Photography Changed Philosophy, London–New York: Routledge, 2023, pp. 97–106.
Thomas Mead, responses to questions concerning his contemporary bromoil practice, August 2026.
Alvin Langdon Coburn, “British Pictorial Photography. The First Part,” Platinum Print, Vol. I, No. 7, February 1915, pp. 8–9.
Thomas Mead, responses to questions concerning his contemporary bromoil practice, August 2026.
Paul L. Anderson, “Where Are We to Get Our Pictorialists?”, Platinum Print, Vol. I, No. 4, May 1914, pp. 2, 5, 11.
Thomas Mead, responses to questions concerning his contemporary bromoil practice, August 2026.
Paul L. Anderson, Pictorial Photography: Its Principles and Practice, Philadelphia–London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1917, pp. 181–205.
Thomas Mead, responses to questions concerning his contemporary bromoil practice, August 2026.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Walter Benjamin, “Small History of Photography,” in On Photography, ed. Esther Leslie, London: Reaktion Books, 2015, pp. 25–30; Daniel Rubinstein, How Photography Changed Philosophy, London–New York: Routledge, 2023, pp. 97–106.
Alvin Langdon Coburn, “British Pictorial Photography. The First Part,” Platinum Print, Vol. I, No. 7, February 1915, pp. 8–9.
References
Paul L. Anderson, Pictorial Photography: Its Principles and Practice, Philadelphia–London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1917.
Walter Benjamin, On Photography, ed. Esther Leslie, London: Reaktion Books, 2015.
Daniel Rubinstein, How Photography Changed Philosophy, London–New York: Routledge, 2023.
Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, London: Reaktion Books, 2000.
Daniel Palmer, “Redundant Photographs: Cameras, Software and Human Obsolescence,” in Daniel Rubinstein, Johnny Golding and Andy Fisher (eds.), On the Verge of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation, Birmingham: ARTicle Press, 2013, pp. 69–88.
Platinum Print: A Journal of Personal Expression, Vols. I–II, 1913–1915.
