Americans sent 11.8 billion photos via e-mail last year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The electronic ones and zeros that constitute the images are decoded into pictures that vary in size and color rendition, and are easily disposed of with the push of a delete button; they have no permanent material existence. This is very different from an earlier era of photography when Alfred Stieglitz, for instance, spent days and days in his darkroom creating one print that he hoped would be an object of physical beauty comparable to an engraving or a painting.

The metals – platinum, gold, and silver – that Stieglitz and others once used in making prints have largely been replaced with pigments applied by LaserJets and similar devices. But the older media achieve effects comparable to the use of period instruments to play early music: delicacy, precision, character, and a near-transcendent beauty that the newest technology is not yet capable of.

The John Stevenson Gallery has up an exhibition devoted to photographers who work in that earlier tradition, “Noble Processes, in a Digital Age: New Works in Hand-Crafted Rare Media.” Each of the 47 prints on view is a unique entity, even when the artists have made more than one rendition of the same image. Many are quite stunning, but you have to be there. The beauty is in the actual thing, and is quite diminished in mechanical or electronic reproductions.

There are two pictures by Koichiro Kurita, “Stonefly, Catskill, NY” (2005) and “Share, Quebec, Canada” (2006), both 34 inches by 23 inches, and printed on Japanese gempe paper handcoated with platinum metals. All gempe paper is produced by a single family in Japan, and only in the fall when the plants it is made from are harvested. It costs $500 for a single sheet.The paper is a silk-like tissue that has to be handled with great care.

In order to create his pictures, Mr. Kurita applies platinum salts in their special solution, then lays the negative on the paper, where it is held down by a glass plate. Thus a contact print, with exposures lasting up to an hour, is made. At each step of the long and technically complex process, a small error may mean the waste of the enormous effort, time, and material expense involved. But the results are exquisite.

“Stonefly” is a picture of a shallow body of water – a stream or pond – with a tree trunk rising from the water at an oblique angle. The trunk and its reflection are the main compositional elements, and the play of light and reflections on the surface of the water is the dominant interest. Whereas a gelatin silver print can have 10 or 12 separate gray tones, platinum can have five times as many, so we see the ripples on the surface of the water in minute detail. The texture of the bark on the tree and the stones in the stream are also reproduced with lov ing fidelity. Light infuses the gempe paper, further enhancing the ethereal luminosity and three-dimensional effect that are typical of platinum prints.

Born in 1947, Mr. Kurita now lives in the United States, but he retains the artistic sensibilities of his native Japan: There is the calligraphy-like design of the tree trunk and its reflection, and an appreciation for the simple elements of nature, including the little insect seen in profile on the bottom of the trunk. This insect, like the bugs in haiku by the 18th-century poet Issa, animates the entire work. And like a haiku that memorializes an instant of time, this scene will endure: Platinum is so stable that it lasts for centuries, until the paper it is on deteriorates and is gone.

Beth Moon uses platinum on Arches paper, which has been made by the same French mill since 1492. Three of her pictures show enormous, ancient trees living in arboretums in England, trees that might once have been adored by Druids. Again, the special qualities of platinum – its luminosity and three-dimensionality – are used to advantage, so that the texture of the bark and the tracery of the branches have an almost tactile presence.

“Seen But Not Heard: The Great Clock of Gormenghast” (2003) is a charming picture of Ms. Moon’s son. Maybe 8 or 9 years old, he reclines on the minute hand on the face of a clock somehow involved with Mervyn Peake’s fantasy series. The delicate modeling seems appropriate for the boy’s youth and the whimsy of the scene.

Cy DeCosse is represented here by a platinum-palladium print on Arches paper and three gum-dichromate photographs. The latter result from an elaborate technique that involves coating the paper with a solution of gum Arabic, potassium dichromate, and a water-soluble pigment. The paper may be recoated and re-exposed to light several times as more colors are added. The last master of this process was Edward Steichen, but Mr. DeCosse and his printer, Keith Taylor, use it to significant effect on the three 20-inch-by-20-inch images from his “Sacred Flowers of the World,” series, “Lily of the Field” (2005), “Passion Flower” (2005), and “Blue Lotus of the Nile” (2005). The subtle colors of these works have a spiritual resonance that might not be achieved with any simpler method.

Brigitte Carnochan has three pictures of flowers: “Clematis” (2000), “Canna” (2001), and “Single Gardenia” (2000). These began as silver-gelatin prints and were then painted over as the artist worked to give them the precise colors she wanted them to have. Linda Broadfoot has pictures of two orchids, “Paphiopedilum mazalin (Small World)” (2006) and “Bealiara marfitch” (2006), whose prints are hand-pulled Polaroid transfers with local reduction, a process that John Stevenson, the gallery’s proprietor, explained to me. The Polaroid film is peeled apart while it is developing, the print is discarded, and the negative is placed face down on a receptor sheet and gently rubbed to transfer the image.The results are unique, and Ms. Broadfoot’s work will not be confused with anyone else’s.

John Yang, Sarah Van Keuren, Michael O’Neill, Michal Macku, Claudia Kunin, Zoe Zimmerman, Joy Goldkind, Lana Caplan, and High Shurley each has his or her personalized process, many involving 19th-century materials like albumen paper, printing-out paper, tintypes, or bromoil. Some have idiosyncratic combinations of old and new techniques. Walter Benjamin feared that works of art in the “age of mechanical reproduction” would lack an “aura”: These photographers say, “Fear not.”

Until June 24 (338 W. 23rd Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 212-352-0070).