04/07/2016
Visual reality is beautiful, but how it reached from the real world to paper and other mediums fascinates me even more. 1839 marked the invention of first commercial photography technique open to public – Daguerreotype, invented by Louis-Jaques-Mandé Daguerre. The world was enthralled by this new invention which could turn reality into objects, which could be preserved and exchanged. Even though Daguerreotype could imitate reality, it would still miss colour, something which people craved in order to come a step closer to reality. This craving would later turn the world of photography upside down. As scientists, chemists, photographers and enthusiasts experimented with colour, some of them would gain some success like Levi Hill, James Maxwell, Louis Hauron in the mid- late 19th century but none of them were commercially successful due to their complexity, in fact in a lot of those experiments, ‘fixing’ couldn’t be achieved which means that the picture dies as soon as it is exposed to light.
By invention of Autochome process in 1907,which is also better known as the first commercial colour photography process (some would argue) , anybody could get their colour photograph clicked ( it wasn’t a cheap deal though! ) . I always wondered what was it like before real colour process kicked in. In order to explore that I researched a lot of early photography process and found out that hand tinting was a very common way of achieving a sort of colour photograph, some very realistically colour, some very evident, yet it was a legitimate process. Hand tinting started soon after daguerreotypes but the issue with that process was that it was a positive process, of which reproductions couldn’t be achieved.
Hand tinting of Wet Plate Collodion photographs, a process invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851, was very common. Pictures were sharp and could be reproduced, which made it suitable for the hand tinting market. I not only wanted to practice hand tinting but also wished to do it on real wet plates/albumen prints. Therefore with the help of my friend Richard Davies, I met John Brewer who practices Wet plate collodion process in Manchester. He taught me this beautiful process in his very intriguing studio. I was able to make my own plates/paper and prints,not just that but I also learnt the traditional process of hand tinting with food colouring and chalk pastels. Wet plate process is complex and includes working with various chemicals. Almost every step is critical in this process. From the time collodion is poured over the glass, the window of shooting and processing is very narrow. It needs to be processed before the plate is dried. This makes this process complicated ( also more fun! )
I feel lucky to be able to learn this amazing process and soon planning to make some plates in India. Hope you like them.
I’d also like to thank Sheena Middha, Nikita Jain ,Puruvi Poddar and Abdullah Ashraf for helping out ( and being very patient).
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