slowlight

three parts of a spell (ambrotype)

For the past few months, I have been working with wet plate collodion photography. It’s something I’ve wanted to start for at least a couple of years, and this summer I had a chance to take a workshop with Kerik Kouklis.

And, no kidding, I am in love.

There are many, many reasons, but I think the key one for me is this: there’s the smallest distance between the maker and the final image. It’s so hands on, so organic, so physical at each and every stage. Everything you do leaves a trace, and you finish with a tangible object in your hands.

And, while I should double-stress that this is not a practical guide to doing it yourself, my good friend Haje has posted a piece I have written about making ambrotypes, over on the mighty photocritic.

(The image above is a 4×5″ clear glass ambrotype, that is it’s a one off image that becomes a postive when against a black background.)

Gabriel Lacomba, from Spain, has a huge range of pinhole photographs in his online portfolio, including some stunning colour portraits, 100 pinhole postcards from Palma, and lots more. Set aside a leisurely amount of time and explore well and admire his work.

Shameless self promotion

Originally uploaded by BosseB.

If you’re going to be anywhere near Öland at the end of the month, I hope you’ll be exploring the joys of Konstnatten. I wish I was able to go along myself, but 16 of my images will be on show at Saxnäs (including a dozen pinhole photographs). And I’m delighted to have my work sharing wall space with pictures by Bosse Blomqvist, one of my very favourite photographers.

Bosse works with old cameras, and often with hand-coated dry plates, doing astonishing things with light and memory.

There’s a good interview with Bosse by Chris Keeney, that’s well worth a read. At the very least, go and look at this and dream of quiet forests.

Brazilian photographer Dirceu Maues has made the most astounding pinhole film, …feito poeira ao vento… (…like dust in the wind…) showing Ver-O-Peso Market in 360 degrees, from the early hours of the morning, to the close of the market day. The three and a half minute film is made from 991 pictures, taken with 38 pinhole matchbox cameras.

A fantastic piece of work!

Stuba by Kęstutis Opulskis

A gallery of work by 33 lithuanian pinhole photographers

I’m particularly taken by Erika Dūdaitė’s game of chess, Valdemaras Manomaitis’s images from travelling round Europe in a cargo truck, Ornela Ramašauskaitė’s cigarettes, Jurgita Remeikytė’s For the memory and…actually, there’s masses of good stuff over there. You choose.

Ritratto ideale di Duchamp e Man Ray by Francesco Capponi

Francesco Capponi makes glorious project-specific pinhole cameras, where the camera and the photos from them are part of the same work. How can you not love a pinhole birdhouse with the bird’s eye view, looking out through the round door, pinhole origami where the camera is a folded box, which becomes the photograph’s frame when finished, a camera built into an olive tree, pinhole chess, and, probably the smallest pinhole camera I’ve seen, the pinhole pinenut?

Two Frogs in Ice by Mark Tweedie

I am completely in love with some of Mark Tweedie’s pinhole work, particularly the Still Life in Ice series he made last winter, freezing things into blocks of ice. I keep going back to look at them, particularly this one of two mummified frogs.

I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations with Mark about the mixed feelings one has about revealing the nitty gritty of setting up and making images, and whether it can add or subtract from the viewer’s enjoyment in the results, or how it changes the way someone looks, but the behind the scenes details about making his series Dream of Flight is worth reading, for the thinking behind the series as well as the “ahh… so that’s how” lightbulb moments. I can’t find the series on his own gallery site, but they are on Mark’s gallery on f295.org, or tucked into his blog.

Ann by Nick Shuval-Sergeev

I’ve known Nick Shuval-Sergeev’s work for a while, but he has a new site with some amazing new work.

If Sudek had used a pinhole camera, perhaps he would have made photographs like Nick’s still lives, though Nick’s works are entirely his own, and hold so much domestic magic and memory in their simple compositions. And his portrait of Ann (above) is just gorgeous. (His older still life work is lovely, but the new images seem to be a whole new world.

Whatever you do, do not miss his zone plate films.

Clematis 7, by Bill Westheimer

Bill Westheimer, a photographer, photogrammer, and experimenter in light and pictures has a huge and glorious site featuring his work.

Any one of the projects alone is a hell of a body of work, but cumulatively it’s mindblowing. I keep going back to look at the wire balls photograms, ferns, the wald series made in the forest, and Manual.

The Manual Project, a series of 150 pictures of hands, made in pairs, with one hand as a photogram, and the other photographed using wet plate collodion, is an astonishing piece of work. There’s an animated selection of the images on youtube, but I enjoyed looking through them slowly, pair by pair.

Collaborating with Charles Schwartz, he’s been exploring the upper east side of New York, using a camera obscura, and recording the results. The work splits into four main parts:

Survey: The landscape and architecture of New York as seen from the Camera Obscura

Surveillance: The Camera Obscura captures the activities and lives of unsuspecting New Yorkers in the course of their daily lives revealing insights into the humanity of the city.

Surface: The two dimensional Camera Obscura images are projected onto objects and bodies contrasting the exterior scenes with unlikely yet related three dimensional shapes

Sun: Observations using the Camera Obscura of the sun and its effects on objects.

Visit, read, explore his work, admire, be inspired.

For those in the right part of the USA: Bill Westheimer’s Wald Pinhole photos are on display at Gallery 51 in Montclair NJ until the end of the summer. There’s more information about the show at Bill’s blog.

Pinholery meets the future, with a group of international researchers creating the brightest, sharpest x-ray holograms of microscopic objects ever made, thousands of times more efficiently than previous x-ray-holographic methods.