Photo: Michael Shindler
On Tuesday my post on backing up your digital data elicited hundreds of responses online. Many of you had a good quip on a time-tested methodology on how to back up your most treasured memories: print them.
What a concept – the photo as an object. As our culture ebbs and, largely FLOWS to just some bits and bytes on a hardrive or server somewhere, an actual physical photo unmistakably elevates in value because of scarcity. I love art as artifact – it’s so damn meta.
Click through the tabs above to see some stylish examples of a very physical photography: tintype photos.
Tintypes (as you might guess based on the ‘tin’) are images that are exposed directly onto a stainless ferrotype plate. As physical as it gets. To see a behind-the-scenes video (via our friends at Cool Hunting) on how these were made at the Photobooth studio in the Mission District of San Francisco click HERE.
tintypes and wet-plate collodion= Polaroid Type 55 for the new millenium
I love this blog, but navigating through the images is such as pain in the ass, can’t you bring the slideshow/quick nav back?!
What makes the tintypes, ambrotypes, and daguerreotype so special is the image is a direct impression of the subject like the old time death masks. The captured photons actual touched the subject just before capture. Other photo processes require some conversion to get the image view-able so “something” is lost. That was a wandering off into the metaphysical…..
Stunning photograph and as powerful as any painting or sculpture
So awesome.