I’ve always been passionate about science, history, and math. In fact before art school, I really wouldn’t say art was a major part of my life, I was probably more likely to become an engineer than I was to become an artist. As art has grown from a passive interest to my main obsession, I put the liberal arts onto the back burner. But I have grown to miss the liberal arts, and over the last summer I came to realize the extent of this. But photography has always been a confluence of art and science, and these photographs are my way of exploring this aspect of photography. The wet plate collodion process breaks photography down into it’s scientific fundamentals, while also adding in the element of the artist’s technique. The speed of the pour, the levels of agitation, the time from pulling the plate out of the tank to pouring the developer, along with countless less easily detected factors (humidity, air pressure, etc), can theoretically have an impact on the final image. But along the way there are several concrete items that are essential to the process of making images in wet plate collodion, and these photographs are my way of celebrating the fusion between image making and science, by cataloging these items.

All these images are scans of prints made in the darkroom, they are not manipulated digitally in any way, with the blemishes of each plate retained, as to preserve the tactile nature of photography before the advent of digital imaging.