First of all, Happy New Year (2009)! I hope all of your dreams, goals and aspirations come to pass. Most of all, I wish you peace. It feels like we're going to need a lot of it in 2009.
Collodion and the Making of Wet-Plate Negatives I've been reading Geoffrey Batchen's book, "Each Wild Idea". I was very moved by the idea of protophotographers and the theories he proposes about the invention of photography and the identity of photography. This got me thinking (again) about wet plate and how we see it today, its past and even its future. What it all means, and why we're even interested in it. It's an ongoing thing with me, I'm still trying to get my head around it and formulate some thoughts about it - forgive me if this is redundant.
I have about ten books (technical) about the Wet Plate Collodion process. The majority of them are from the 19th century. I have one from the Eastman Kodak Company, published in 1935 called, "Collodion and the Making of Wet-Plate Negatives". It's really good, loaded with great information. I've found bits and pieces about the process here and there in various other 20th century books, like "Light and Film". That's where I found Joel Snyder a couple of years ago and his wet-plate revival work that no one has ever talked about. He responded to my email and said this:
Dear Quinn,
Thanks for your note.
I produced a permanent exhibition for the Department of the History of Photography of the Smithsonian Institution in 1967. I was in my mid-20s. The exhibit contained 16 examples of important photographic processes, including three forms of wet collodion. In 1976, Doug Munson and I co-founded the Chicago Albumen Works. CAW is now doing all sorts of work preserving, archiving, and replicating negatives for major institutions in the US and Europe. It has been printing in albumen, salt paper, platinum, and POP since 1976. CAW has had printing commissions from MoMA (we printed about 300 Atget negatives on albumen paper for its 4 Atget exhibits 1979-1983), the Met (NYC), etc.
I've been a historian of art at the University of Chicago since 1977. I've no idea why others have received the credit for being first to use use the collodion process in recent times, but it isn't something that concerns me. Doug and I taught ourselves to work with collodion. I was very lucky to meet John Ryan, a retired photoengraver (for R.R. Donnelley, a major printer in the US) who had used collodion for plate-making until the late 1950s. He gave me bottles of Eastman Kodak collodion and Eastman chemicals for making "hard-working" (straight iodides) and "soft working" (iodides, chlorides and bromides) collodion. Most people don't know that Eastman produced collodion for the photomechanical trade. Ryan gave me a few useful tricks for aging collodion rapidly, and for varying the acidity of silver baths in order to get variations in the properties of the sensitized collodion. I still have the bottles, tightly sealed and unused.
Best,
Joel Snyder, Professor
Department of Art History
University of Chicago
Joel Snyder's project in the book, "Light and Film".
Which brings me to my point; A long time ago, I realized that everything that we know about the wet plate collodion process today, we know because of the 19th and 20th century literature. Even the guys working in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, used that literature. I haven't found one thing, not a thing, that I can't show you in the old manuals that's being used today - recipes, techniques, vocabulary, methodologies, etc. There's absolutely nothing new! Every one of us teaching wet plate today, is simply regurgitating what all of the photographers in the 19th century knew. We're not inventing anything new, nor are we offering anything that can't be found, for free, in the old manuals.
"Flowing the plate with Collodion"Before you send me emails telling me I'm wrong, I know that they didn't have hair dyers, Rapid Fix, and suction cups back (or did they?) then, so I want to be clear; I mean there's nothing new in the core of the process. Yes, we have some new fancy gadgets to make things a little bit easier today, but there's nothing fundamentally different in the process at all.
That's a very cool thing to think about. Something so good, and so desirable, and yet we can't improve on it after 158 years! We can't make it obsolete! Even my computer is replaced after a couple of years! I know what you're thinking, you're saying, "C'mon Quinn, dry plates, film and now digital have all replaced the wet plate process, so your theory is bunk!" I suppose you could say that. However, I'm talking about the drive to get the same "look and feel" - the same aesthetic, and maybe even the same experience (actually going through the process). It doesn't seem to have become outdated or undesirable. Or am I just looking at this from a tiny, delusional worldview? I suppose I could be writing about Atari Pong, or some other small, obscure niche group, couldn't I? After all, that's what this is.
With today's technology, why can't we, or why won't we, replicate the aesthetic of wet plate? There's a demand for it, no doubt about that. But is there enough demand to profit from it? There are all kinds of filters and effects in Adobe Photoshop - watercolor, canvas, crosshatch (my favorite), dry brush, film grain, fresco, neon glow, plastic wrap, and a lot more - why not one for wet plate? If there was an Ambrotype Plugin for Adobe Photoshop, would you stop using the process? Or are you after something more, something beyond Photoshop?