Digital photography is a great convenience, but there’s something to be said about hand making a photo.
The new exhibit at Auric Gallery, “Sal Argenti (Salt of Silver),” features more than 60 photos by Angela Crews, Richard Rinker, Dan Russell and Don Jones, who used processes from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The show opens with a free reception Friday and runs through September.
“There’s a slowing down and you’re forced to look at all the aspects of the process,” said Crews, a longtime teacher in Bemis School of Art’s darkroom. “Photography is an art form and you’re looking at light and composition, but there’s also the scientific, chemistry side of it. There are so many different facets of it — they keep me intrigued.”
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The photos pick up the history of photography from 1851, with a process known as wet-plate collodion, which was used in the Civil War and to document geologic explorations from the 1860s to early 1880s. When the country started mapping the West and explorers roamed the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevada mountain range, photographers accompanied them, such as William Henry Jackson, using wet-plate, a jump in quality, exposure times and technology from previous photographic methods.
“It’s a complicated process,” Crews said. “You have to coat the plate, shoot the plate and process the plate all on site, so they needed a mobile darkroom. That’s why Civil War photographers had a darkroom wagon on horseback.”
The 1880s saw the emergence of the dry plate process, when photographers no longer needed to tote around a mobile darkroom and could carry plates back to their home darkrooms.
Flexible film, or what’s known as traditional black and white film, debuted in the 20th century and featured photos printed on silver gelatin paper. All four photographers in the show still work in film, some of which will be featured in the exhibit.
The majority of Crews’ and Jones’ work in the show is tintypes, little portraits made on metal that were popular in the 19th century.
Russell’s photos, created from glass plate negatives, a process from the 1880s, are printed using a traditional process called Van Dyke brown printing, which involves coating a canvas with ferric ammonium citrate, tartaric acid and silver nitrate, and exposing it to ultraviolet light.
Rinker’s contributions focus on zone plate work, where the use of light creates images with a glowing effect.
“There’s a magic in the darkroom,” Crews said. “I’ve always felt a connection to process. I love the methodology behind making something from beginning to end. Mixing my own chemicals, making my own plates, shooting the image, and everything is by hand.”
Nature and landscape images populate Crews’ photos, while the other photographers capture architectural elements, historic trains and figures.
“Mine speak to loss and overcoming loss, a bit of darkness and seeing rebirth through nature and finding that light through loss,” Crews said. “My pieces are all found in nature, whether trees or blooms or relics in nature, like a skull or feather, but the lighting and darkness in them speaks to loss and finding a reason to live.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source gazette.com ’
