Wet Plate Collodion Amid Pandemic

Wet Plate Collodion Amid Pandemic

  Shortly after Yosemite trip, Covid-19 virus started to really spread.  Everything stopped, people were ordered to stay inside as much as possible, and life seemed to have frozen in its tracks.  I isolated myself in my studio/darkroom, and, like I’m sure many among us, fell into a bit of a depression, in part due to losing all prospects of work for the foreseeable future. 
  For days and weeks, I meandered about my little space, cleaning, organizing, maintaining chemistry, reading, sleeping way more than usual…  When going outside, it was strange not to see people’s smiles or even frowns; everyone was masked, and crossed the street upon approach as if whoever was coming their was wielding a machete and was covered in pig blood.   It was weird.  I found myself staying in the darkroom longer and longer, days seem to stretch on without end. 

  There have been other periods in my life when energy was low, so low that it seemed hopeless.  In the past, making art was what never failed to dispel those clouds, and so I knew I needed to shoot something; something new for me, something that would push the limits of my own comfort zone. 

  Depression makes you feel small, alone, defenseless, and venerable.  When there’s nowhere to go and no motivation to do anything, even walls of my cozy and dearly beloved little studio start to seem like a cage. 

  In the past I rarely turned my camera upon myself, I’m not Cindy Sherman, but occasionally a self-portrait idea seems valid and worthy, and so it did this time around.  I also don’t usually shoot nudes, and certainly never before have pictured myself a la natural, so this was going to be a push in a new direction. 

  I knew that my friend Justin, whose office is in next building over, had a small collection of vintage gas masks, so I asked to borrow one with a long tube, which resembles an elephant trunk.  After all, elephants never forget.  They never forget the good times they had, and they know where water is even amid historic drought.

  A fun challenge when doing self-portraits with wet plate is how to handle lighting and camera operation.  In studio I use flash, and usually trigger it with a light meter, which is the only thing I now use that tool for.  However, I didn’t want to have anything electronic in my hands, or have the cord showing.  Fun solution was to hide the light meter in background folds in the corner, get in position, and find the trigger button with my pinky toe.  Below are the two 4x5 ambrotype images I made that evening.  One was made on deep purple glass, and one on green.   

  First attempt was made on green glass.  When I saw it after clearing in fixer, I wasn’t convinced that it’s the best I could do, so went for the purple one.  Satisfied with that outcome, I turned my attention back to green plate, and figured out how it needed to be finished in order to make me happy.  Ambrotypes on colored glass, traditionally known as ‘ruby glass’ ambrotypes no matter what color glass is actually used, have an interesting quality.   When you lay them down on a table or anything darker than medium grey, they look almost perfectly like a tintype, or usual black-backed ambrotypes.  Some cast may remain, especially under strong lighting, and you can see a bit of it in the purple plate above.  When you back them up with black, almost no color comes bath through, but put something white behind them and you get a great duochrome effect.  Green is a color often associated with disease, and all the collodion artifacts that appeared around me in first plate seemed reminiscent of swirls of air, laden with Covid particles, ready to envelop and attack me.  To create the above affect, green ambrotype was backed with white mat board, and the area I wanted to have no color was painted black. 

  I was really happy with how both plates came out, and was even happier when, while picking up the loaned mask, Justin saw the purple one and purchased it on the spot.   In fact, he liked it so much that he wanted to see how he would look in similar setting and on larger 8x10 plate.  A few days later, tintype below was born. 

  Meanwhile the virus raged on. It was not long until worldwide death toll reached 100.000.  Justin had been collecting newspapers with large pandemic-related headlines, and suggested making a plate with the paper from the day this grim milestone was reached.  Bus stop location was selected to represent the old mundane routine in a new way.  Tintypes are always laterally reversed, so writing there is backwards, and that adds another small part to the surreal situation we all found ourselves in. 

  A few months passed, and US surged in number of Covid-19 cases as if it was a numbers race to impress the whole world.  Well, the world was very impressed.  Impressed with sheer stupidity of anti-maskers, complete disconnect of current government officials from science and common sense, their inability to act according to protocols set up for decades for just these types of emergencies, with amount of lying and concealing, stonewalling and demagoguery; basically impressed all around.  In what seemed like no time at all, death toll hit 100.000 in just USA.  Among them were my great aunt, who, up until the virus, was going strong at her age of 92, and had to die alone with none of her few remaining relatives around her.  I also hear of the passing of very kind and talented artist I knew and interacted with a lot, who lived in upstate New York and was I believe in his late 50s.  Debates though raged on.  Is it worth shutting down the economy over a few saved lives?  I doubt it’s a question many of those who personally know someone who died would be asking, but the voices of oblivious were ringing louder and louder.  Plus, terrible things kept happening again and again with police brutality reaching boiling points, and erupting in protests all over the country.  And then there’s the fact that’s in an election year, and there’s a good percentage of population who are very rightly worried about actual survival of democracy this time around, and so conversation around that topic got louder and louder.  Basically, the virus seemed to have fallen in ranking of importance, and life seemed to have moved right along.   So with the 100.000 US deaths headline, we made the following plate. 

  Of all above plates, only the green 4x5 ambrotype remains available.  All 8x10in plates have been purchased by private collectors, and, as mentioned above, purple 4x5 is residing with Justin.  

Anton

Yosemite Wet Plate Collodion and Daguerreotype Adventure

In January this year I took a trip to one of California’s true natural gems – Yosemite National Park.  The aim of this trip was to make a couple daguerreotypes, and to give a new camera I acquired in 2019 it’s first workout in over a century.  I traveled there with a friend, whose airport shuttle converted into a darkroom was to be the used for creation of our work.  In retrospect that was a mistake, but more about that a little later when we get to daguerreotypes. 

  The new camera I happened to have found with help from a friend in Colorado is a pretty special one.  It is an 8x10 field wet plate collodion model, made by American Optical Company in mid 1870s.  By then, Scovill already acquired the company, but kept it as a separate entity, marketing that line of products as higher quality built. 

  Cameras from 1870s are fairly rare, and vast majority of the ones that get unearthed are studio models.  Those cameras stayed indoors, resting comfortably atop rolling stands, and so they survived in much better shape, plus I think there may have been just more of them than field models.  Even with studio camera, it’s a fact that finding one with a matching and working plate holder is nearly impossible, and is always considered a medium-sized miracle.   Silver nitrate is a strong corrosive, and those wooden plate holders absorbed it little by little from drips of one plate after another, and over time the wood swelled, rotted, and rendered 99% of those holders completely unusable.  My suspicion, since each holder was made specifically for each camera, is that photographers would have used their setup until the holder became junk, and then stop using that camera all together, rather than sending in the back standard to have a new holder fitted. I was overjoyed to have found this camera with a nearly 100% intact plate holder.

  By all signs I can find, the camera was well used, but with much care.  Original silver stains from wet plate era are overly abundant, and over time in one corner of rear door it even made a beautiful reflective silver surface.  Inside the holder were two reducing inserts; one original for wet collodion plates in 5x8in size, and inside that a smaller homemade one for 4x5in. The 4x5 inserts looks used, but lacks any sign of silver nitrate, so I suspect that is was made as dry plates became available, and used in second half of its original service.  After a while, I can’t imagine how many thousands of images that could be, original wooden dark slide wore down so much on two end corners, that it started to have a gap, which would have let in large amounts of light, and so I recon that’s when the camera was finally retired for good.  Somehow this camera ended up in possession of a Colorado hoarder, where it sat for an unknown length of time before being rescued by my friend.  When it got to me, the only thing I had to do to the body was replacing the bellows, as original set was made of cloth dipped in early form of rubber, and though I am sure it would have been amazing and beautiful when new, after 150 years that rubber became hard as a rock, and would crack and chip every time I tried to stretch it.  Replacing bellows and making a new dark slide out of some plastic were the only two things I had to do to get my new 150 year old baby back in shooting order.  Also, because this camera takes really odd sized lens boards, it made most sense to put a universal iris flange on there, so any number of lenses can be put on that same board in seconds.

  There were two full days of shooting on this trip, and I decided to dedicate the first day to shooting wet plate collodion, and second day to daguerreotypes.  Yosemite is a magical place, and if one points their camera in almost any direction, they will be rewarded with a beautiful frame.  Still, I wanted to make my images stand apart from others.  With me I brought a variety of wet plate era lenses, but I think I ended up using mostly just three of them – 8in Dallmeyer Triple Achromat from 1864, 12in James Queen Single Achromat from mid 1870s, and 16in Voigtlander Euryscope ca. 1880.  A landscape photographer from 19^th century could have easily had any one of these lenses in their wagon, as all of them are superb for making views.  Dallmeyer lens actually came together with the camera from same estate, and so it really could have been together with my camera back then.

  Working with a new camera is usually a bit nerve wrecking, because one has to readjust a bit to get used to quirks and specificities of each apparatus, but not in this case.  As soon as the camera was up on a tripod, it started working as if I’ve had it all my life.  All controls are exactly where they need to be, and, after waiting for 150 years, plate holder slid into position as if drawn in by magnets.  I made 9-10 plates in 2-3 locations, and here’s a selection of those 8x10s.  These unique original plates are now available for purchase with prices ranging from $500 to $800 per plate. 

  Second day was to be a day of daguerreotype.   We had another two wet plate photographers join us, which was rather distracting.  Even though they used their own setups, there’s still a lot of mental energy that goes into interacting in a group of 4 rather than 2.  My mind was also scrambled by a conversation with one of those two, during which I found out that this particular person is unwilling to commit one way or the other to the actual shape of our planet, believe moon landing is fake, and considers willful ignorance to me morally superior to strict adherence to facts of and scientific methods.  I tried discarding that information, but to be in physical presence of such blatant and proud denial was simply depressing.   The other factor that was working against me was that I was operating in a brand new to me darkroom, one that has been built by a great wet plate photographer, but built strictly in a minimalist utilitarian manner.  And yeah, I had to pack all equipment and chemistry and glassware and cameras and lenses for both 8x10 wet plate and 4x5 daguerreotype processes, which is a ton of stuff let me tell you.  

  First parking spot was at the Tunnel View overlook, which is about the most known and visited spot, where thousands of images are made each day.  No matter though, I don’t think a lot of daguerreotypes have been made from there (actually I think none ever have).   Working in a new space, and having people in and out the darkroom and all around me didn’t make for an easy start.  First two plates were not to my liking.  By the time I got third plate exposed, the other folks were done shooting collodion, and were waiting to move on.   When I cleared the plate in fixer I couldn’t believe it.  A most perfect plate I have ever made was staring up at me though thin cover of hypo.   I called over the others, and each of them let out an audible gasp when they saw it.  I explained to folks not to be too excited, as there’s still a chance to mess it all up in gilding.  It’s true, that’s the last step in the process, and it can go horribly wrong if done haphazardly, but I haven’t had it turn disastrous in a while, so there was a degree of confidence.  The image was so beautiful that my hands trembled as I washed it and mixed gilding solution.  The crowd all gathered inside the darkroom, mesmerized by the still unfinished plate.  It is during this moment I discovered that the only thing I forgot from 100 pieces of equipment was my super clean gold chloride mixing beaker.   Panic set in, and it soon became apparent that aboard the large vehicle stuffed with beakers and trays and all other things relating to photography, there was not a single clean container.  I mean the whole darkroom was technically one large silver nitrate stain, but I didn’t have to lick the tables or eat off the floor, all I needed was one 20-50ml beaker that was clean.  Nope, that wasn’t in the cards.  I selected the most stain-free plastic beaker and washed and scrubbed it best I could.  When first mixing gold and hypo, and if things are contaminated, solution can turn black instead of golden yellow.  That didn’t happen, and so I was optimistic.  I lit my alcohol burner and set it on table behind me.  With reverent care, I placed my precious plate atop the gilding stand, and poured gold solution over it.  I turned around to get my burner, and when I turned back it was as if I was hit with a meteorite.  Where just 2 seconds ago there was an image with every branch of every tree in the valley defines as if real, with Yosemite falls so pure and powerful, with Half Dome so mythical and misty, seen through purple opalescence amid atmospheric perspective, now there was nothing by a milky puddle of white cloudy solution, through with I could see only the delineation of sky against horizon, and even that barely so.  I was speechless, staring down at it with a lit burner in my hand, I think my mouth opened but no sound came out.  People around me were asking ‘what happened’, but I just couldn’t talk, it felt like I just got shot.  When I described what happened to folks who know chemistry a bit more, they said it was most likely the tiniest amount of silver nitrate on the lip of that cursed beaker contaminated the solution as I was pouring it onto the plate, and caused some sort of a reaction that I have never seen before.  The image was gone though, not a trace. 
  I could barely talk for the rest of the day, but managed to pull myself together just enough to make one more plate at the next location.  It is a very good plate, no doubt about it, and I would have been thrilled with it had I not seen the absolute perfection that just got obliterated in front of my eyes.   Still, I had enough strength of mind not to gild second plate there, and kept it in water until we got to a place where I could find a single clean cup.  Here’s that one and only daguerreotype of El Capitan, with it’s famous ‘heart’ showing and well lit.  This plate has been sold.

  In conclusion, I would like to say that it’s always best to work with your own setup, one that you know by heart, and where all objects may still be dirty, but they are dirty in a way that you know them to be.  Also, I am in love with that American Optical 8x10, and I think it will become my main location wet plate camera.

All the very best,

Anton.

Note - This is a catch-up post, and I will write a few of these to cover activity from first part of 2020.  In order to keep all 4 parts of Daguerrean Dream series together, I skipped posting until it was all finished, so there’s a bit of a backlog of images to post. 

P.S.  If you think that through millennia all the millions of scientists alive have been a part of a perfectly coordinated multi-cultural multi-generational conspiracy to make you think that the Earth is round, when in fact it’s not, then you are a very special kind of human; the

 rare kind that I don’t ever want to cross paths with.

Daguerrean Dream, Visual Symphony - Part IV

Daguerrean Dream

Visual Symphony – Part IV

Etat Soutenu

 

  From the very first moment we gain consciousness, to the time it leaves us, all our experiences are sustained and defined by neurological system of the brain.  Physical sensations, emotions, and dreams are stored within and interpreted by the same biochemical system of neurons, a nebulous grey matter web.  What is real, what is normal, what is beautiful or ugly, all determined and catalogued within the same confined space we call our mind.  Stacked and staggered impulses blend into a fine mesh of perception.  Fantasy and and reality seem to dissolve each other and morph, as we are carried forth by fabric of time.  Cranial wonders, secrets, and revelations guide us along an essentially existential experience of continuity.

  Encounters during waking hours may be as fleeting or as significant as those during dreamtime.  Both can have as little or as much impact as we choose, and both add color to our awareness of self and all that surrounds us.  While passing days bring tangible objects to which we assign a label of being real, times of rest provide for time during which a cocktail of truth and fiction flows unabated into shapes of its fancy, only rarely providing us with any degree of control.  Life is a blend of the two, nothing more, nothing less.  Amount of attention paid to proportions within this mix, and to which we decide to assign more significance, largely determines our journey through larger tale of history.

 

  Consisting of ten 4x5in plates, Part IV of Daguerrean Dream series addresses my take on that which supports the state of my Being.  Cacophonic selection of real objects and dream visions, fixed upon silver plates in roughly chronological order.   As in life, continuity, afforded to us by things physical and familiar, is maintained via nano-scale network, one that is living and ever evolving.  Daguerreotype technique is most natural choice for best representation of a singularly unique path of ones lifetime.  With nearly infinite detail, and being intrinsically unrepeatable, daguerreotype images have their own personal presence.  Opalescence effect is akin to the dynamism of neurologic network, with its lively play of color and shift of tone, changing right in front of your eyes. No two connections and no two interactions will be the same, just like in life we can’t walk into the same river twice.  Infamously difficult to reproduce in digital or printed media, each of these daguerreotype plates will outlive me by hundreds of years, and will refract light from their surface and into the eyes of those who hold them in same way my eye saw it.

  For daguerreotypes, video presentation format provides an experience most closely reminiscent of actual in-person examination.  A moving image also mimics the play we see unfold in front of us as, we make our way from start to finish of life.

Anton

Daguerrean Dream, Visual Symphony - Part III

Daguerrean Dream
Visual Symphony – Part III

Imaginary Scherzo

  Fast and fleeting imagery of imagination, rip and ripple continually through consciousness.  In a whimsical whirlwind, they momentarily carry me to otherworldly places, where surreal scenarios imprint themselves upon the matrix of my mind.  Reality’s relativity is stretched to last sustainable limits, and in that stressed state is let to mold itself anew, with freshly redesigned self-sustaining properties, which let me glance upon themselves in relatable ways.  Was I dreaming, or did that really happen?

  In this third movement of my Daguerrean Symphony I wanted to explore the sacred space of my dreams.  I set out to explore those endless ways, in which visual information, gathered and retained throughout the waking parts of my life, is metamorphosed by the lens of fantasy.  Episodes of daily existence and feelings, scenes and semblances of all kinds, personal history and aspirations; all these exist within the cranial annals of memory, a primordial soup of ephemeral thought.  It is during dreaming cycles of our resting hours, and sometimes in brief apparitions we may label as daydreams or, in more extreme cases, even hallucinations, that gray matter acts to reorganize and reshape it all as if playing with  building blocks.  In which unexpected and exciting ways will these reworked forms present themselves?  

  Lying in bed, half awakened from a vivid dream, I often concentrate on these lessons of newly formed connections.  At times strikingly bold, and at times as if cloaked by fog, they all have lessons for me to learn, and, who knows, perhaps to teach.  Should I labor to represent upon a silver plate a particular instance of such sight, will the experience of one who views my final image be relatable to my own? I dare to dream so, but in the end that’s irrelevant.  When you look at the 18 plates below, what is it that You see?  Which neural connectors are triggered, which bits and pieces are trawled up from subliminal depth of Your cognition?

Dreamer

Head In The Clouds

Breath In

Projective Synesthesia

Photography For Clowns

Creation

Third Eye Door

Buddy

Root Energy

Branch Energy

Night in OB

Cactus Spikes

Lines Of Communication

Emergence

Prangey Redux

Party Bug

Skull Space

Gaze

On Technique:

  Dreams and visions are complex cocktails of reality and imagination.  All senses and experiences are jumbled and reorganized, and what emerges from that is usually something never before seen or experienced.  Thus, to create these daguerreotypes, I set out on a path not yet explored by image-makers of the past.  Starting in late 2018, I devised and executed a series of experiments involving over 100 separate trials. All work was carried out in strictly analog fashion. The goal was to explore properties of daguerreotype process, which, just like our subconscious, were always hidden in plain sight. Along with other effects, I was most interested in controling and intensifying those colors within refractive capability of image surface, as well as exploring limits and boundaries of opalescense.  By early spring , after much meditation upon plate behaviour while given various treatments, I produced the first plates, which would subsequently evolve into this third part of the symphony.  

  As you likely have noticed, most of the plates above are shown at a slight to moderate angle.  This angle of view and lighting has been selected to best represent the color of the original.  In fact, looking at the mirror-polished silver surface of the plate squarely and straight on, shows the viewer’s reflection, so daguerreotypes are always viewed slightly askew.  There is simply no way to even capture in a digital copy the amount of detail a daguerreotype holds, much less so to relate that to viewers upon a screen at 72dpi.  With its weight and presence, a daguerreotype is meant to be examined live, ideally while being held in hand, and interacted with.  All of the tones and colors you see play and change as the viewer changes their position or the position of the plate.  So just imagine that you’re the one holding these unique object we call ‘Daguerreotypes’.

Anton

Daguerrean Dream, Visual Symphony - Part II

Daguerrean Dream
Visual Symphony – Part II

Interplanetary Adagio

  Change is the only observable constant.  Where there’s matter, there’s flux.  Material substance goes though various metamorphosis, and cultures, ideas, and emotions are no different.  Coming to is followed by prominence, forced out by decline and obscurity; the great wheel keeps mercilessly grinding its gears.  Gaining a clear awareness of this at an early age, prompted my mind to actively seek shelter from relentless onslaught of attachment and subsequent loss.  By directing more and more attention to dreams and fantasy, a workaround seemed to present itself, where scenarios were suspended in timeless ether of my imagination.  Objects gained well-defined personalities, while time became a coloring tool, filling in the gaps between the lines. 

  Long before I learned of idioms about a tree falling in the woods, or single clapping hand, I often directed my attention to very similar themes.  Attempting to grasp it through as many senses as I could, I would try to imagine the feeling of my room.  I knew that room like the back of my hand, but yet I knew that I have always experienced that room with me in it.  How was it though when I was not there?  How did it feel in there?  Can I pick out one sunlit dust particle floating through the air? Can I pick out a million of them all at once?  I attempted to grasp it all at once, a full virtual reality with only my own neural connection and brain chemistry to aid me.  I’ve also always loved science fiction writing, so space and time travel were often on the forefront of my thinking.  Looking up at the night sky, I earnestly tried to picture and feel what was that thing they call Infinity?   Is infinity of time the same as one for space since what is one without the other?

  As I learned of progress and evolution, I started to notice that those concepts, noble and natural as they are, imply more and more so rapid renewal of technology.  I recall taking apart a gramophone, barometer, fountain pens, etc.   Those technologies were at their time top of their game.  Yet, where does that perfection go when something new comes around?  For the answer to this recurring question, I once again turned to the familiar fertile grounds of my imagination.  There, these antiquated objects found refuge within infinity of space, upon colorful new planets, where they would still be valid, needed, admired.   In my mind, I relinquished to such fate the catapult, spindle, steam engine and so many more.  With ever-accelerating pace of innovation, more and more such instances occur on almost daily basis.  

 This second part of my visual symphony shows 7 fantastical perspectives, which can be seen as movie stills.  Objects presented there used to fill our daily life with joy, or beauty, or be helpful to us.  Replaced by smart phone apps, and no longer appreciated en mass on Earth, they were spotted deep within my dream-space, as they set off on interplanetary expeditions, probing deep space for suitable habitats.  A flood of ambient organic sounds, accompanies their flight.  Like whispering howl of wind as it makes its way across rolling prairie hills, or the echoes of whale song reverberating from coral reefs, these sounds filled in the ever widening distances between these imaginary space explorers, tying them together choreographically in an interplanetary adagio.  

  Try to extend your senses in their direction.  Let the cold emptiness of vacuum, or the enveloping clouds of unknown chemical composition fill your mind and senses.  Can you feel our long forgotten friends as they venture through infinity of time and space in search of happiness?

Space Explorer #1

Space Explorer #2

Space Explorer #3

Space Explorer #4

Space Explorer #5

Space Explorer #6

Space Explorer #7

On Technique:
  In order to faithfully translate my vision upon daguerreotype plates a new approach seemed necessary.   My explorers would encounter various atmospheres of heavenly bodies, some of which would likely have elements and turbulences unlike anything seen on earth, or even within our Solar System. Thus, those colors and effects had to be teased out of my imagination.  Dreams, as well as wakeful imagination, often take familiar objects and sights, and place them in entirely conjured situations, as if filling in the background and environments for those objects upon a blank canvas, using free-association of memory to draw upon for pertinent information.

  In light of that, all images in this series were made with objects positioned on pure white background, usually a plain foam board.  When desired, light was controlled to delineate planetary horizons.  Tones and colors seen in various atmospheres and those of exhaust from my space travelers’ engines were created via careful chemical manipulation, via a method that came to me in a dream.  

  Once again, images here are shown at a slight angle.  I will once again call attention to the fact that daguerreotype produces its tone and colors via refraction of white light, so they change in appearance depending on viewing conditions, and are best experienced live.  In order to best reproduce the color though, they have to be at slight angle, and be lit from particular angle, so for the purposes of this post they were copied while being held in hand.

Anton