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Whole Plate show catalog

The Whole Plate Project – Art Reactor Gallery August 6- September 10, 2010

The Whole Plate Project is a community of photographers working in the Whole Plate format (6.5 x 8.5 inches). Whole Plate was the original photographic size, derived from book printing requirements. It is an extremely well-balanced proportion, and offers a comfortable middle ground between the portability of 5×7 and the grand scale of 8×10. With standardization around 4×5, 5×7 and 8×10, whole plate fell out of favor and into obscurity. Along with the revival of historical processes such as wet plate collodion, platinum, and gum bichromate, the whole plate format has been undergoing a contemporary renaissance as more and more photographers are re-discovering their photographic roots.
The purpose of this exhibition is to showcase the work of photographers working in whole plate format. This exhibition is a contemplation of historical themes, genres, effects, or a historical meditation on modern and contemporary movements, events and ideas.

The Artists: Quinn Jacobson

These three images are Whole Plate Black Glass Ambrotypes (unique positive images; monotypes). I call this triptych, “Three Portraits in Paris: Chopin’s Left Hand”.
In 2010, I was commissioned to make portraits of Parisians at the Centre Iris Gallery – 238 Rue Saint Martin Paris, France.
I made 175 images over a span of about four months. I’ve selected these three for specific reasons in reference to the history of Paris and its people and the Wet Plate Collodion positive image.
The first Daguerreotypes were Whole Plate size, made not too far from where I made these images. Also, the Collodion positive images are laterally reversed, so the tattoo of Chopin’s hand appears as his right hand, not left. I find the temporal confusion interesting and the story in the triptych intriguing.
The descriptions of Chopin’s left hand are so numerous that there’s no doubt it was rare and unusual. One description says his hand was “the skeleton of a soldier surrounded by muscles of a woman”. Stephen Heller said, “His left hand covered one third of the keyboard like a snake’s mouth that opens suddenly to swallow a rabbit one bouchée (bite)”.
On the morning of October 17th, 1849, Augustus Clesinger made a cast of Chopin’s . He also made several drawings of Chopin on his deathbed. The casts of the musician’s hand and face are in the Museum of Romantic Life at 16, rue Chaptal, Paris, France.
The legend is that Chopin wrote his music in a way that is only playable with an abnormally large left hand like his. Therefore, no pianist since Chopin is able to play them. All of Chopin’s piano pieces must be rewritten to accommodate the size of an average person’s left hand.

Three Portraits in Paris: Chopin’s Left Hand
Black-glass Ambrotypes     $500

Heather F. Wetzel

The world moves so fast these days. Time moves so fast. It seems like there is less and less time for the slower things in life. Time to sit and reflect, time to remember, time to notice the little things. I look around, and see everything moving at the speed of “instant” and I realize life will never be the same as I remember it growing up. Personal interaction seems to be diminishing, changing, replaced by emails, and text messages comprised of abbreviated code. Analog ways are being replaced by faster, newer, “better” technology. Images are being replaced by intangible, transient digital files made of zeros and ones – no texture, no smell, no weight. I prefer a slower pace, where one takes time to notice and appreciate those little things and with that mindfulness, to craft an image or an object that documents the often unnoticed details of one’s surroundings while leaving evidence of one’s hands every step of the way.
Process is important to me in my work, just as important as subject matter, concept, content, and theme.

Untitled: Columbine Study No. 1
Wet Plate Collodion Ruby Photogram    $675

Untitled: Columbine Study No. 2
Wet Plate Collodion Ruby Photogram    $675

Untitled: Columbine Study No. 3
Wet Plate Collodion Ruby Photogram    $675

Barry Schmetter

I became interested in Wet Plate Collodion several years ago after seeing a demonstration, and I am captivated by the unpredictability, fragility, and uniqueness of the medium. I chose the whole plate format because of not only the proportions (not too square, not too oblong) but also the historic significance of the format. I feel that making images today in the original format has a significance in the era of digital photography where size, proportion and composition are now completely independent of, and sometimes irrelevant to, the final image.

Dialogue
Clear glass Ambrotype    $400

Taxonomy Lesson
Clear glass Ambrotype    $400

Scott Davis

My interest in the whole plate format came about through a variety of encounters with historic formats, media and images. Whole plate makes for a wonderful portrait, and it also has a very pleasing aspect for landscape and architecture. The series presented here is part of an ongoing project to document my neighborhood in Washington DC, at night. Night photographs hold a fascination for me because they trouble the notion that a photograph is a captured single moment in time, and that somehow this freezing the moment in time represents some kind of absolute truth. Night photographs take on a surreal character because they are not illuminated naturally – between the qualities and colors of artifical illumination, and the random, conflicting and chaotic directions and patterns of light in the scene, even the familiar looks alien. Vehicles pass and record their passing as streaks and blobs of light, but what were they? People walk by and don’t register at all, or become ghostly and indistinct when they pause, rendering identity as anonymity rather than as an absolute. This nocturnal effect becomes magnified when you add in the alterations of weather to the landscape, such as the series of blizzards in February of this year.

I print in platinum and palladium, an antique process invented in the 1870s. Platinum has an extremely long tonal scale, enabling a delicateness and openness to the print not possible in silver, as well as an archival stability second to none. A well-crafted platinum print will endure as long as the paper under it survives.

Starbucks Sign, 13th & U Streets NW
Platinum-Palladium print    $300

Lincoln Theater, U Street NW
Platinum-Palladium print    $300

Ben’s Chili Bowl, U Street NW
Platinum-Palladium print    $300

Denise Ross

I am the founder and editor of The Light Farm, a web journal dedicated to the rescue and renaissance of handcrafted silver gelatin printing paper, gelatin dry plate photography and artisan film.

‘Silver gelatin’ was the very definition of photography for over a century. For most of that time, the science of emulsion making was wrapped in commercial patents – held as trade secrets that more often than not went to the grave with their inventors. Much has been lost to history. I seek to reverse that loss. It will be the work of a lifetime.

For me, science and art are inseparable. Simply reinventing the old recipes without using them for art would be a sterile pursuit, so I try to understand one to understand the other. Along the way, occasionally, something nice happens, and magic makes sense.

Long Term Memory
Hand-crafted Silver Gelatin print    $300

Short Term Memory
Hand-crafted Silver Gelatin print    $300

Accommodation
Hand-crafted Silver Gelatin print    $300

Diane Maher

I have been photographing the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area in St. Louis, Missouri for several years, and the space has a magic I try to capture on film. As the seasons pass and the weather changes, it takes on different characters. I like to photograph around the viewing platform because when the wind kicks up, the metal catwalk sings to me.

Viewing Platform in Snow
Silver Gelatin print    $100

Viewing Platform at Sunset
Silver Gelatin print    $100

Under the Viewing Platform
Silver Gelatin print    $100

David White

After long consideration arising from a need to simplify my photography, I have begun making and printing ‘whole plate’ sized negatives. My mahogany Rochester is lightweight and makes an ideal field camera while eliminating the need of projection printing and its inherent complexities. My step up from 4×5 retains the ease of handling and judging negatives, yet delivers a satisfying direct contact print. I believe I also prefer the more pronounced aspect ratio of the whole plate over 4×5 and find it an aid in composition.

These photographs document the remains of the stone mansion known originally as ‘The Hermitage’. It was constructed in a secluded forest in 1855 and subsequently abandoned after a fire in 1934. The remaining evidence allows one to reconstruct the floorplan and to guess where the stone was originally quarried from, but the site is slowly returning to forest.

Untitled #1
Silver Gelatin print   $100

Untitled #2
Silver Gelatin print   $100

Chris Rini

I am in love with all things Victorian – I do chemical photography, I use a mechanical typewriter, I drive a Model T, so it was a natural to pick up the whole plate format. I print cyanotypes because they have a moodiness to them, and they are in many ways the most user-friendly photographic process – you don’t need a dedicated darkroom to work in the medium, just a sink and some sunlight.

Taking Ones’ Medicine
Cyanotype   $100
The Beginning is the End…
Cyanotype   $100