Curatorial description (Metropolitan Museum, Accessed: 6 April 2015)
Tripe probably made paper negatives because the process was more forgiving in India's climate. He could also prepare his negatives in advance and develop them at his leisure, unlike the newly invented collodion process in which the glass negative had to be prepared immediately before exposure and developed immediately afterward. Tripe also used very thin paper, which he waxed in order to make his negatives more transparent and capture greater detail. He made his prints by placing the negative in contact with a sheet of light-sensitive paper. At the time, there was no practical way to make enlargements; thus, if he wanted a large print, his negative had to be of equal size.
