On and Off the Wall

On and Off the Wall is my next curatorial project. I plan to exhibit some tintypes I made last year in West Virginia.

Rouchly 4 inches x 5 inches, they are delicate, highly detailed and are positives. Working in this way is such a different way to represent the world. It kind of hard to look past the process with this kind of medium, so the subject matter is important. Tintypes were popular from about the 1850's. They are also known as Ferrotypes. Hey were highly popular from about the 1850's and you could get them right up till the 1950's.

The process goes something like the following images. It is all wet and to capture the image on the wet plate is the idea. A tintype is a wet plate process. Once coated by hand, exposed the silver nitrate and further developed in dilute fixer and water baths, it is left to dry and harden.

It is a great process, if you can afford the time for it. It is fiddly and the darkroom needs to be very near as its best to 'coat' and shoot.

T