are narratives captured over
many minutes. The portraits
taken using daylight comprise
four different wet plates,
exposed one after the other, of
facial quarters of the subjects,
with each image taking about a
quarter of an hour to capture.
Printing them as a digital C type
from the wet plate originals and
assembling them to view, the
‘icons’ stretch and dissect the
sitter like photographic Francis
Bacons: mesmerising.
Reba Maybury is the final
subject shown. In this series,
the stylist John William worked
with Wozniak to create a
moment, as if peering out of the
window of a stalling time
machine into an indeterminate
era. The dressing and the
camera take away cues which
would otherwise reassure you in
trying to ‘read’ the image and
you are left with your eyes
dancing around looking for
comfort and finding nowhere to
settle . . . It takes time, once
back on the Earl’s Court Road,
to re-adjust your reality.
Paul Hooper
such as the Matthew Brady
studio portrait of General Custer,
taken in 1865. It requires the
photographer to mix a light
sensitive solution, coat a glass
plate and get it into a camera –
all in the dark and before the
plate begins to dry. Once the
camera is set the image has to
be taken quickly as the dryer the
plate the longer the exposure
needed to fix the image.
You might think that it is
ageing that give the images we
know their antiquity, but starting
upstairs with Wozniak’s
contemporary series ‘Artisan’,
portraits of the same with the
artefacts of their trade around
them, you immediately realise
that we are misinterpreting early
images. The process, which can
render the finest detail, tonal
depth and gradation instantly
ages the context. The chemistry
makes the photographer work in
a certain way, the wet or damp
plate and the cookery element
and the timescale of the
exposure constrain composition.
Modern cameras produce grey
scale images that are colour
balanced tonally; working with a
wet plate the chemistry is only
sensitive to blue light – cold
colours appear lighter, warm
ones darker, so you are
unavoidably dislocated from your
expectations when you look at
the result.
If ‘Artisans’ are individual
narratives or photo sociology
fixed in a second, the
‘Iconography’ series downstairs
Contemporary photographers
are crippled by the extraction
of nuance from their work, as
the infinitely malleable analogue
materials that once rendered a
fixed image on paper or plate
have been enthusiastically
replaced by the mathematical
digital engine. In many ways for
an artist, digital photography is
harder to master than the wet
processes that it so quickly
usurped 20 years ago. Where
previously a photographer could
control the image from inception
to print this has been taken
away by the lure of ‘auto’. Every
element of an image is now
controlled by a slider and an
alogorithm – you get what the
photographer ‘likes’ as opposed
to what they previously created in
the alchemy of the chemistry.
That there is a reaction against
this from artist photographers
means that there are images
now being shown which are
more than a photographic
equivalent of the ubiquitous
giclée. Kasia Wozniak has a
show entitled ‘Contemplate’ at
Gallery 286
(until March 7th, call
for opening hours). Working on
three levels of the space one is
taken deeper and deeper into an
exploration of subject, context
and temporality by her work.
Before you start, you have to
work out a relationship or
interpretation of the method of
the Wet Plate Collodion Process.
It is archaic, being pioneered in
the 19th century and familiar to
us all through famous images
12
GALLERIES MARCH 2014
FOCALPOINT
The Wet Plate Collodion process
K
asia Wazniak
‘No: 25’ from the Iconography Series.
‘Jake Rusby’ from the Artizan Series both at
Gallery 286
