While studying photography in undergrad at Miami University, I completed a university-funded independent research project on the creation of tintypes through the wet plate collodion photographic process. I had the opportunity to take a workshop with the amazing Ian Ruhter at the Palms Spring Photo Festival before embarking on the project. I then spent a summer mixing dangerous chemicals in my college darkroom and asking others to hold very still in front of an 8x10 camera. The wet plate collodion process was primarily used in the 19th century but is kept alive by a niche group of enthusiasts today. While it's a highly impractical, costly, and cumbersome process (requiring slow shutter speeds, intricate chemical setups, and a large-format camera), it can produce the most alive, rich, and unique photographs. I'll probably never have the resources to be able to make tintypes again, but here is a selection from the ones I was able to take that summer.

Looking back at this project nearly a decade later as I'm remaking my portfolio and migrating my image files, I'm struck by the fact that these images reside primarily on the internet, not in physical form. The tintypes themselves faded in the months and years after their making, I'm assuming because of my imperfect fixing process. I'm glad that I did high definition scans of them while they were still at peak visibility. It's interesting that images created with such an old process with the intention of creating physical images now reside in a cardboard box under my wardrobe. After I made them, I placed them there, separated by paper towels from the photo studio. I guess I wasn't sure how best to archive them and felt intimidated by the lack of knowledge on how best to preserve them. I should really take them out and give them a better place. It's just sad that these images themselves, as physical media, can't be seen as they once could be. They are dark, but the .jpgs are plenty bright. What does this say about my relationship, our relationship, to photography in the digital age?