Cliche Verre

Cliche verre, a Greek phrase meaning “glass picture,” is a photographic technique in which the photographer etches an image onto a piece of glass that has been smoked over with a candle’s tallow.

After the photographer was done sketching the image, he would put a piece of light-sensitive paper over it and leave it in the sun where the image would be transferred onto the paper. A number of prints could be made using the same piece of glass.

Where the glass hadn’t been etched into, the paper would turn out darker because it was in these places that light was able to pass through the glass and color the photosensitive paper.

During the mid 19th century, French landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot made the cliche verre a popular combination of art and photography.

Cliche verre was one of the earliest forms of reproducing images before the advent of the camera. As a precursor to photography, cliche verre could accurately represent the original scene without the tonal variations available in modern day photography.