Collodion Wet Plate
My interest in alternative photography processes has led me to one of the earliest developments, dating from the 1850s: Collodion Wet Plate. I have always admired the irregularities and imperfections of this process. I try to make myself available to Sally Mann's Angel of Uncertainty, the angel responsible for those flaws that conveniently contribute to an interesting picture. As a result I consider my adventure with Collodion Wet Plate to be a cooperative activity, a collaboration.
Homage to Santa Barbara
In this series I combine two photographic techniques which enhance my personal response to my subject matter: Lith printing and emulsion transfer. Lith printing requires an extra-long exposure of the negative, and 15 minutes--or longer--in a highly dilute developer. I have used a paper which softens and warms the images, while adding grittiness. I then transfer the emulsion of the print onto watercolor paper to intensify the texture and allow the image to float toward the edges.
Artifacts: tota pulcra es (you are completely beautiful)
I found this Latin phrase on a seemingly secular wall in Rome: tota pulcra es et macula non est in te. It translates: you are completely beautiful (or pure) and there is no stain (of original sin) in you. For me, this phrase expresses my reverence for the richly variegated surfaces in Italy: completely beautiful and without blemish. I printed my B&W negatives on a paper with a lithographic developer that creates an earthy warm tone corresponding to terracotta uncovered after centuries. I then transferred the emulsion of each print to watercolor paper to achieve some distortion corresponing to the chipping and fragmentation of an artifact.
The Inbetween
My focus in this series is on the narrow dimension on the surface of the water, which responds to the air above and the currents below. With a slightly longer exposure the motion of the water is slowed, and can be tracked. The result is an image not seen by the naked eye. In this way, the image travels further from the everyday.
Lionizing the Shore
Long exposures captured here on film, lend powerful substance, that is, animal-like volume and texture, to the otherwise ephemeral nature of waves lapping the shore.
Minds in the Cave
At the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, I learned that physicists work only on blackboards (not whiteboards). Throughout this building, designed by Michael Graves, blackboards can be found in the lounge, in hallways, the library and even outdoors in the courtyard, where they become weathered. Blackboards have always appealed to me for their range of tonality, the deep black sheen of a pristine board, the highly contrasting strokes of chalk, and the murky smokiness of erasures upon erasures.
The sunlight pours through glass doors leading to the courtyard, nullifying the blackness of the slate and sets up a tension between the inside where the dedicated scientists labor on their theories, with the beckoning world of sun and beach just beyond.
This heightened sense of the contrast between the inside and the outside reminds me of early humans working deep inside caves, painting potent symbols of a world they are trying to understand. In the same way these present day scholars are drawing with chalk on slate surfaces to express their understanding of the universe.