Collodion Portraits

This is one of those posts where I should be elated, but I'm not (so much).

I prepared all week to make some images for the Getty Conservation Institute today. The Getty invited me (and others) to be part of their project called, "Preserving the Chemical Photography Era". I got the invite months ago, but between my book and DVD, workshops, Wet Plate Day, and life, I haven't had the chance to do the work. However, I almost succeeded today.

One of my many weaknesses is perfectionism. Not on everything, and certainly not in every situation. But making plates for the Getty Institute tends to bring the proclivity for "perfection" out.

The irony is, I'm working in Wet Plate Collodion photography, "perfection" doesn't exist. In fact, I've written many times about how I love the imperfection of the process - how do I reconcile that? The project isn't even about what I'm trippin' on - it's really kind of a "geek" project. A cool geek project, I might add.

They are analyzing different photographic (chemical) techniques and documenting how the image was produced. It's for future generations to identify images they have no clue about. When they discover the 5000 glass plates that I will have stored in my attic, they'll know what they are looking at and how they were made. Cool stuff.

My dilemma is a personal one; I don't feel that these images are worthy of the Getty. Primarily because I scratched the surface on #2 and it looks like shit now. I was so pissed, I almost had an anxiety attack, I'm serious. I flipped out. It was THE perfect image. I wanted to brush a mark off of the top of the glass and my finger left a huge mark on the plate, I was sick and wanted to scream. It took me two hours to get the image and it was gone in a fraction of a second. Even through I ruined #2, I think I still may put it in my book. What do you think, would you? I like #1, I distressed (forgive me) it on purpose, I really like his expression and "presence" in it. The piece of Collodion gone from the bottom right side doesn't bother me at all on that one. 

Anyway, I'm not sending them to the Getty, but wanted to share them with you. I have to say, they had the potential to be some of the best images I've ever made. Maybe next week.

#1 Whole Plate Black Glass Ambrotyoe (6.5"x8.5") May 9, 2009 - Viernheim, Germany
#2 Whole Plate Ambrotype (6.5"x8.5") May 9, 2009 - Viernheim, Germany Later broken and then purchased in Paris.

Happy Wet Plate Day - I Hope Your Hands Are Black!

It's a beautiful day today and we made the most of it. Today is Worldwide Wet Plate Collodion Day 2009! We're honored and pleased to be a part of it.

Summer and I made plates most of the day and was lucky enough to have a couple of sitters for some portraits. We had a lot of fun. Summer knocked it out of the park with her Converse shot. She'll have to tell you what it's about - consumerism and being a teenager, I think.

As a group (Collodionistas), we decided to set a day aside to honor the man who invented the process - Frederick Scott Archer. We also want to honor the process itself - however ones sees fit to do that (usually by making some photographs). Unfortunately, today is Archer's death date. He died 157 years ago! We don't know his birth date, if we find out, we may change the date we do this on.

It's easy to forget what role photography has played in our lives and in history. Frederick Scott Archer played a significant part in making photography what it is today. We tend to take it for granted - pour a few plates and that might make you think twice - that's not a bad thing, either (ether).

If we really wanted to honor Archer, we would all be making 8x10 negatives and printing Albumen - maybe next year!

Here's some of what we did today:

 

"Jürgen, der Klempner" - Whole Plate Alumitype - by Quinn 
 

"Schweinehaxen" - Whole Plate Alumitype - by Quinn 
 

"Schweinehaxen" - burnished & cropped - Whole Plate Black Glass Ambrotype - by Quinn (I love the texture of the glass showing through)  
 

"Converse From Berlin" - 5x4 Alumitype - by Summer 
 

Progress With My Project: Portraits From Frankfurt

India, Romania and (the former) East Germany, and Russia represent some of the faces I photographed yesterday in Frankfurt.

Kathy Schaefer organized the Montmartre am Main in Höchst, a village that's part of Frankfurt, Germany. We meet right on the river (Main) - artists from all over come to paint, draw and of course, make photographs. Kathy's idea is a great one - she understands the difficulty and the politics of galleries and the general public's reluctance to visiting an art gallery, let alone interact with the artist. I applaud her, it's a wonderful thing and I'm honored to be a part of it.

The Frankfurter Neue Presse had a journalist there and did a little story about the event. If you can read German, you can read the article here. It's kind of a weird photo they ran, but it's okay. People in Frankfurt are learning that there are alternatives to galleries and that artists aren't a bunch of recluse weirdos (or are we?).

It was beautiful yesterday. Bright blue sky, sun and about 20C (68F) degrees. The breeze from the river keeps that area especially cool - it's very nice. We setup next to the old castle wall and work. Summer came with me and helped out a lot! She setup and kept the workflow going. She also varnished all of the plates (did an excellent job, too!). We started about 2PM. Around 3PM or 4PM, there were a lot of people hanging out and looking at everyone's work. Since I'm working on my project, and I have willing sitters standing in line to have their image made, I draw quit a bit of attention.

It's great to see so many lay people blown away by this process. It excites me and encourages me to "evangelize" the process and photographic history even more. The younger people don't even know what film is, let alone, what Wet Plate Collodion is. There were a lot of them there yesterday just waiting to see the next plate. I thought that was very cool.

I've started making photographs for my project without sharing a lot of information about what I'm doing. Who I choose to photograph, how I position people or compose the image, the props I use (or not), how I execute the process: flaws, no flaws, size of image and even the substrate I use. Yesterday was a testament to that methodology working for me.

I'm seriously considering an entire body of work on 4x5 aluminum. I may experiment next time (2 weeks from now) with the Whole Plate (6.5" x 8.5") size to get some of that vignette I love so much. I had excellent results with aluminum yesterday - I wasn't that excited about using it, but this worked out very well! How much play do you think 30 or 40 small aluminum images would get in a world of 40"x60" color digital prints? It makes me laugh to think about it!

Here are a few plates from Höchst. I don't speak Bengali, Romanian, Russian or even that much German, so you can imagine how difficult this was to do without a head-brace (How do you say "Hold still, don't move, this will take a while). Most of the sitters would walk away after I focused and composed! Just another dimension/difficulty to making plates.

Everything is 4x5 Alumitypes shot with my Derogy (Petzval) Portrait lens wide open against the castle wall.  

"Calcutta, India - Indian Woman" 
Dresden, East Germany
Bucharest, Romania 
Bucharest, Romania 
Romanian Children 
The Frankfurter Neue Presse Article (no, it's not a hot dog) 

Wet Plate Collodion Positives & Negative From April 11, 2009

I'm suppose to be editing video for my DVD today. I'm not in the mood. After I get done with this post, I'm going to go make another espresso and sit on the porch and watch the day pass.

It's gorgeous today. It's sunny and almost 26C (~80F) degrees. That's my maximum comfortable temperature. If it gets past 26C I don't like it.

Summer and I had a good time yesterday making photographs. She's got it down. She helped me with the negative work and made several positive images on her own. I'll go out on a limb here and say that she's probably the youngest Collodionista in the world! I'm sure I'll get some email if she's not. I'm trying to encourage her to teach the process when she starts college next year. It would be a great part time gig for an undergraduate student, not to mention what doors it may open for her.

Here are a few plates from yesterday's effort (as always, click to enlarge):

 

"Summer's Fan" - Whole Plate Alumitype
"The Three Summers" - Whole Plate Alumitype 
"Westmalle Trappist Beer" - 5"x7" Negative Toned/POP
Sometimes, we run out of room on our mantle for glass and metal!

Tre

I have a lot to write about but no time to write. I had a very successful workshop in Kefermarkt, Austria and an unforgettable trip to the concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria. I will never look at granite the same way again in my life.

In the next several days, I'll make another post with images and descriptions of our adventures in the mountains of Austria. It was both beautiful and disturbing - a lot like life, I suppose.

Summer and I made plates all day today (7 - 8 hours, plus varnish time). She was working the Collodion hard and did a wonderful job making some work she's wanted to do for a long time. I couldn't help but post a portrait I made today.

Stay tuned - I'll be back in a few days with some thoughts and images from Austria.

"Tre" Viernheim, Germany Black Glass Ambrotype

Tracks Headed East

A sense of urgency overtook me today and I was able to get a couple of important photographs made. I'm exhausted right now, but elated. While I call everything an experiment, it's not exactly true. For now, however, I'm calling the work experimental.

The "train tracks" image below is something I've been meaning to try for a while. Most all of the tracks here were used, at least in some part, to transport Jews and other undesirables to either bigger train stations or directly to the concentration camps. My friend, Caron, mentioned that I should look at making some images like this - I couldn't agree more.

The feeling I get when I look at this empty, quiet image is one of anxiety. I'm waiting for a train to rip through this space headed east (the direction of this image) with cars full of people going to their death. Although, it doesn't look like it, I was very close to the tracks. It made me a little bit nervous. I shot this with my new (old) CC Harrison portrait lens - wide open - what a neo-pictorialist, huh? I was lucky to find a spot where I had access to the tracks (and schlep all of my Scheise to it). Sometimes, it's difficult doing these kinds of things. I was thinking about how I would probably be arrested in the United States for doing this... you know the whole terrorist scare thing. No one was around when I made the images. It was out of the way and "in between" towns.

"Train Tracks Headed East - Bahnhof Ahead" - 29 March 2008 - 1305 - 10x8 Black Glass Ambrotype (destroyed) - Southwestern Germany (quiet countryside). 
I'm going to keep making images of memorials, tracks, and portraits (and whatever else strikes me). I'm also going to explore making images of smokestacks. All of these symbols are very powerful to me. I have no idea how all of this is translating, or will translate, but I'll keep making images, thinking out loud, writing my thoughts and ideas down and hopefully, someday put it all together.

 

Chemical Pictures - The Cover

Chemical Pictures - The Wet Plate Collodion Photography BookI'm very happy! After many iterations, the cover of my new book and DVD is finished. Sometimes, I think over-thinking can be as bad as not thinking at all. I may have over-thought the cover, at least on the first few iterations. Remember, text out of context is a pretext. I had some "pretext-ing" going on.

I'm very happy with the results of this cover (click on it to see it bigger) and of the book and DVD. It's been a project I've been working on for years. I published one other book on the process in 2006. That was mostly for my graduate work and I didn't feel like I had adequate time to include everything that I wanted to. This work includes everything you've always wanted to know about making positive Wet Plate Collodion images and even some things that you don't want to know about. I'm very proud of this piece. It's based not only on my own personal experience working in the process for a few years, but on primary literature. Over the last two years, I read and studied every 19th and 20th century manual or book on the process I could find. I was amazed and enlightened at what I found. Not only is there everything in the old manuals that you need to learn the process (technical, formulae, etc), each photographer had their own interpretation and ideas on what worked the best. Not unlike today - there were several people who called themselves "masters" of the process. However, a lot of them had glaring flaws in their techniques and methodologies - the recipes and techniques conflicted a lot. I found it very interesting and entertaining, to say the least.

A lot of people deserve credit for this book and DVD. I've asked people all over the world to be involved in it - contributing everything from a piece on artificial lighting to collaborating on this cover - it's been a great experience and I want to thank everyone that's helped me - I'm truly thankful (and Summer will thank when she's paying her tuition, too.)

The next step: I have to make some changes (after the second editing process) and wrap up the online content (.flv files) and then wait for the printer to make my books and DVDs! Oh happy day!

Creative Image Maker Magazine (CiM)

Glass Plate Photography Edition I received an email today from David Vickers at CiM (Creative Image Maker Magazine) that the Glass Plate Photography edition was finished. I wrote a piece for it called, "Coming Alive Through An Old Process." And I submitted 12 images with the text, too.

It was surprising to see to that they gave me 10 pages and published all 12 images! The piece looks good. I hope to work with them on a regular basis regarding Wet Plate Collodion photography.

You can download the PDF for free, or purchase a printed copy (~$15 USD) the proceeds go to charity - a good cause. 

Go take a look - Glass Plate Photography - CiM

Wet Plate Collodion in Brussels, Belgium

I did a demonstration/performance (that's what I call them) for a group of photo artists, collectors and friends in Brussels, Belgium Saturday. My friend, Carl Fransman (lives in Brussels and organizes all things photo related), sent me some great photos from yesterday's shoot/demo/performance - thanks Carl! All photos by Carl Fransman.

Quinn explains the "tastiness" of ripe Collodion. 
Bright eyed and bushy tailed - that's Quinn in his darkbox.

The preparations begin in the darkbox.
Cleaning the plate.
Pouring, or flowing the plate, with the aforementioned "tasty" Collodion.
Quinn acting like a magician, trying to keep the "tastiness" on the glass.
Draining the tastiness. The gentleman behind me has one of the most exquisite 19th century camera/photo collections in Europe - he owns two, yes, two Dubronis. We've been invited to his home for dinner and to see his collection! 
The first plate - 8x10 Black Glass Ambrotype (not fixed yet) - a group of photo artist/collectors from Brussels. 
The second plate - a Whole Plate Alumitype - varnishing the plate. 
The portrait of the Belgian Artists (and Quinn) is varnished! 
The Belgian Artists (and Quinn)! Near the Grand Sablon, Brussels - February 7, 2009