High contrast silver halide negative photographic material and processing thereof

A silver halide photographic material comprises a support having thereon at least one silver halide emulsion layer, wherein the silver halide emulsion layer is composed of a silver halide emulsion containing at least 1 x 10 mol of a rhodium salt per mol of silver, the rhodium content in the shell portions of the silver halide grains of the silver halide emulsion is larger than that in the core portions thereof, and the silver halide emulsion layer or at least one other hydrophilic colloid layer of the material contains a hydrazine compound represented by the general formula (I): wherein A1 and A2 both represent hydrogen atoms or one of them represents a hydrogen atom and the other represents a sulfinic acid residual group or acyl group, R1 represents an optionally substituted aliphatic, aromatic or heterocyclic group, R represents a hydrogen atom, or an optionally substituted alkyl, aryl, alkoxy, aryloxy or amino group, and G represents a carbonyl group, a sulfonyl group, a sulfoxy group, a phosphoryl group or an iminomethylene group, provided that at least one of R1 and R2 has at least one substituent group which can be disassociated to an anion of which the pKa value is at least 6. Forty such compounds are shown. The silver halide photographic material is imagewise exposed, and subsequently developed with a developing solution containing sulfite ions in an amount of at least 0.15 mol per liter and having a pH of 10.5 to 12.3 so as to form superhigh contrast negative images.