Weighing the Baby
Medium
Albumen silver print, stereo
Dimensions
Each image: 7.7 × 7.6 cm (3 1/16 × 3 in.); Card: 8.8 × 17.7 cm (3 1/2 × 7 in.)
Classification
stereograph (albumen)
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
152547
Art Historical Context
**Weighing the Baby** (1892) by Benjamin West Kilburn captures tender, everyday moment through the innovative medium of albumen silver print stereograph. Produced as a pair of nearly identical images mounted on a card—each measuring just 7.7 × 7.6 cm—these views were designed for viewing through a stereoscope, a striking three-dimensional effect. Albumen prints, made with egg whites to bind light-sensitive silver salts, were the gold standard of 19th-century photography, prized for their rich tonal range and fine detail on small scales. Kilburn, a prolific American photographer from the Kilbu...