With the development of digital photography, we have more access than ever to photographs. We see them every day and have become focused on the image content rather than the photograph as an object. In the beginning, photography was a painstaking process of coating and processing of plates and hand developing. Digital photography has eliminated any chemical irregularity that would draw the viewers attention to the surface of the images. My images investigate the materiality of photography through the use of the 19th-century photographic process of wet plate collodion in hopes of returning to an object-based practice. The tintype is an ideal medium for these investigations, each tintype is unique no matter the effort put into it in order to make a duplicate of images, the duplicate can not always be achieved. 

 

The tintypes I have created show the traces of the collodion and developer on the surface to draw attention to the photograph’s creation rather than the image content. I want the viewer of my photographs to think about the creation of the images. The images themselves also draw attention to a disruption of the normal image plane by only revealing parts of appropriated images.  By allowing the developer to flow freely over the surface of the plate these interruptions speak about photography and it’s objecthood and materiality. This creates a counter-narrative to most photography.