#alex pomnikow

[stefaniamodel]

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Supervision 3/4  & The Varnished Truth

In my discussion of my supervision sessions here, I try to highlight one or two major themes, points, or ideas that really stood out for me and that I need to pay attention to, and more importantly, what that means to me, rather than provide a blow-by-blow recap of what happened or what was said.

Last week, my supervisor and I discussed the importance and quality of the wet plate portraits I’d done back in June and I showed her some digital test shots of still life work that I’d done and was emulating wet plate with these pictures to get a feel for how these might turn out. When she pressed me about why I wasn’t doing more with the portraits (which I really find satisfying for a variety of reasons), I said because I could actually do digital work in my flat right now, not rely on work that hadn’t been done in the course of this calendar term. This led us into a discussion of the appropriateness of using work that you’ve done previously and incorporating it into a work or project that is currently under production. I came to the realisation that this constraint (that word, again) that I was placing on myself, rather than any prescription from anywhere else, and most importantly, that it was really limiting and unhelpful in the progress of my work. This realisation, and the sense of release and relief that came with the understanding that I was imposing something on myself no one else was that was unrealistic, gave me a greater sense of freedom to explore the older work.

A second, more pragmatic topic emerged when we started talking about permission to utilise people’s images in the project. I am quite conscious of the ethical and legal dimensions of using someone’s image in my work. Having worked in high schools, I assiduously avoided taking pictures for my own use that even *might* include a student in the frame because I don’t want to deal with the hassles, and, to be honest, the appearance of taking a picture of a minor, especially if it might appear in a social media context. That said, when I’ve been working on wet plates, I’ve been working primarily in an open studio situation, where lots of artists have mini studios in a large building, and when I’m going to do a plate, I run around and find people willing to sit in front of the camera for about 5 minutes while I create the plate and shoot it. If someone doesn’t want to sit and have their picture taken, that’s usually the moment where they opt out. But I was resigned and dreading that now I would have to go back and ask for permission and potentially ask them to sign model releases to use the work in a public setting. But that’s the right thing to do. I was most concerned about an image I did of another artist’s kids (with her permission and their cooperation) which I feel is a very strong and really ‘works’ that I want to use might have to not be used if I couldn’t get permission from the parent and the kids themselves. Luckily, after sending out emails and texts, I’ve received positive responses for use from all the subjects bar one, whom I think I simply haven’t heard from yet because he doesn’t check email very often. But I do acknowledge not merely a legal obligation, but a moral one, to use people’s images with their approval, since we are making something together.

This week we discussed the contrast of old and new technologies on the work I’m doing. The portrait plates I’ve shot have been done with a ‘modern’ camera (an Intrepid MK IV Black Edition) which is made of 3D printed parts, but really, in wet plate photography, the camera is itself merely a lightproof box used to hold: A) the plate and B) the lens. These two elements are where the image really happens. The lenses I use are both quite old. One is a 300mm Ross Extra Rapid f/5.6 originally meant for 9x7 work. The other is an older, unmarked, likely French made lenses that is stamped by City Sales and Exchange of London. It’s a Petzval 150mm f/4 lens. It was possibly made as a magic lantern lens and repurposed as a camera lens by CS&E, who were notorious for doing just that. Both lenses have unique character to me; does is this ‘character’ objective, or is it because I know how old they are that I feel there is a unique feel to the images they produce? This is a question for philosophers to thrash out. Which they’ve been unable to do, convincingly. However, I do know that I love the images that they help to create and they both deliver images that are quite sharp in some areas with lovely bokeh in others. There is, I feel a warmth and a depth to them where the crystalline images I get with my mirrorless camera and its sharp autofocus feel a touch sterile. I am also keenly aware that I am using an historical object at a historical moment in human history. All of these portraits have been created using an old technique with mostly old equipment to capture people at an important moment in human history. And, while I’m not willing to ditch digital and go exclusively wet plate/film, there is a quality to the portraits that, no matter how much digital sorcery I use, can re-create the bespoke, one of a kind plate emerges from the tray of my wet plate rinses.

Another point that we discussed this week was two-fold. I have begun writing on my images. Wet plates are not pristine pieces. They are, like all people, flawed and imperfect. This is not a bad thing, to my thinking. I was working with a master furniture maker a couple of years ago on a project. He told me that so few people make a piece of furniture by hand any more that there are people who go out and look for flaws in pieces because imperfection is the only sure guarantee that the piece was made by hand. I like creating things. I like that the things I create are unique and one of a king. Yes, they can be scanned or photographed and those images can be reproduced, but the image itself, the sensory, tactile, olfactory image is alone in its existence. One of the things I love about wet plates, which, sadly will be missing from reviews is their smell. The final step of creating a plate is varnishing it. (See images below) Sandarac gum resin is mixed with lavender oil and alcohol to create this varnish. Even after drying, the aluminium plates retain a faint lavender smell which I find powerful in surfacing the memory of creating the plate. I would have dearly loved to be sitting in studio for a Review and pass around the small plates for people to see, touch and smell. Alas, another thing that 2020 has robbed us of.

The second element my supervisor and I discussed this week was my addition of text, in my own hand writing, to the digital images I am producing. I recently listened to an interview with Duane Michals and when I began researching him, I was struck by his incorporation of text into his images. I was also reflecting about a lecture from Critical Frameworks last semester that was a discussion of words as art. I wanted to place myself in the character of the people the images and get them to speak something to us as witnesses to COVID-19 and its myriad changes to our lives. I wanted these words to be live the images themselves, a little messy and imperfect. At the same time, I didn’t want to fill up the frame with words. I wanted to pair words up with the images that left things open to the viewers understanding and interpretation of the image. Remembering the lesson I learned last term, I didn’t want to fill up the borders of the images, which are being displayed digitally in November, and I wanted to give the viewer credit for being able to fill in the images with their own meanings about the correspondence between text and image. Showing her a few examples, my supervisor was quite supportive of the direction I’ve taken these images.

Finally, here are some pictures of me in the final step of making a wet plate, varnishing. The collodion emulsion on the plates needs to be durably sealed or else it will scratch and peel over time. The coat of varnish applied to them makes them quite durable. Tintypes from the 1850s on are still found today in attics, basements, etc after being stored in relatively abusive conditions that would have destroyed other photographic media and they’re little worse for wear. 

(Many thanks to Alex Pomnikow for taking these images while I was working.)

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