Paul Alsop, Children of Alchemy (Portrait (ATEP 2017))

This is a series of portraits made with the Wet Plate Collodion process (1851) on a vintage camera (1970's), an image made with liquid silver and light. They are the culmination of planning and patience, you usually only get one chance to make one image (especially with children). The process (as described below) is a very purposeful method, it takes 20 minutes to make one image, and each image is hand crafted in my mobile caravan darkroom. The slow nature of the process requires concentration and discipline from the subject (not something that children have in abundance!), so you only get one shot to get it right. The process sees light differently to other photographic processes, blue eyes become almost ghostly light, in the time it takes to make a single portrait, the sitter drops all false emotion and people often say 'they see the soul in the image'. The technique, is from the Victorian era, 1851 and often, the forefathers of modern photography were referred to as 'alchemists'. These particular images are a mix of ambrotypes (made on glass) and tintypes (made on metal) the same way Billy the Kid or Abraham Lincoln had their images made. The images exist as original archival, physical solid objects, silver on metal or glass. They are scans of the original plates. The technique requires the portrait sitter to be very still for at least 20 seconds and it can take 20 minutes to make a single portrait with my mobile darkroom caravan, otherwise you end up with a blurry, out of focus image.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.