Notes From the Studio: Staring at the Sun

I made a new tintype today (I made several, actually)—something small, simple, and unexpectedly revealing. It began as a response to reading Yalom’s Staring at the Sun. I sculpted a tiny figure and a rough, spiked “sun” and set them up in the studio to explore that familiar tension between awe, fear, and the search for meaning.

But once the plate dried, the image took on a different life. The “sun” started to resemble a virus, and the little figure looked like he was trying to negotiate with a force he couldn’t quite name. It shifted the whole feeling of the piece. It’s strange when a photograph teaches you something you didn’t intend, but that’s usually a sign you’re on the right track.

“Staring at the Sun—V.2,” Whole Plate Tintype—November 30, 2025 - Las Cruces, New Mexico

The chemistry added its own voice, too. I shot it wide open with an 1872 Dallmeyer 3B lens, using natural New Mexico light. Because the developer had no alcohol in it, the plate is full of sweeping, ghostlike marks, patterns that feel like turbulence or weather. Those imperfections have become one of the things I trust most about collodion. They reveal the atmosphere of the moment in a way nothing else can.

This little setup feels like the start of a new thread, a kind of still-life cosmology. Small figures, simple objects, big questions. I won’t say more yet, but I’m excited about where this can go.

I’ll keep at it and see what develops ;-)

The Alchemy of Attention

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 *