This is the silver bath I filtered today. One liter of clean AgNO₃, ready for plates tomorrow. It’s the first time I’ve filtered and maintained silver (or any chemical in the process) since 2023. The move from the mountains of Colorado to the desert of southern New Mexico took time: more than just chronologically. It took time to root again, to find rhythm, and to remember why I started this work in the first place.
The PhD program has become my way back. It’s a return to the process that has always been the heart of my practice. Wet collodion will be central again, not just as a technique, but as a way of being present with the materials, the world, and myself.
Working with glass plates is an act of attention. The glass is both fragile and eternal; it records every trace of what passes over it. The collodion binds light to the surface for only a few minutes before it dries, so everything depends on presence. It asks you to show up completely. 100%
Filtering the silver feels ceremonial. It’s a quiet ritual of purification, of chemistry, but also of intent. Silver sees everything. It reacts to the smallest impurity, just as the psyche reacts to what we avoid. It’s easy to anthropomorphize AgNO₃. It has moods. It remembers. It rewards patience and punishes haste. Working with it becomes a kind of dialogue between matter and mind, between what’s visible and what’s hidden (until the sun shines on your hands).
In the end, every plate is a mirror of both chemistry and consciousness. Each pour, each exposure, and each development is a small transformation—matter becoming memory and light becoming meaning.
Tomorrow, I’ll pour my first plates in this new desert light. It feels like coming home to something ancient, something still alive, something that believes in the alchemy of attention.
* smily face *