01: Study
Silvy in his studio with his family, 1866 by Camille Silvy (c) Private collection, Paris
Wet Plate Collodion
Invented in the 1850s, the wet plate collodion process is one of photography’s earliest and most alchemical techniques—born in an era when images were conjured through glass, metal, and chemistry rather than pixels. It requires the photographer to coat, sensitize, expose, and develop the plate while it’s still wet, often within a matter of minutes. The result is a hand-crafted image—delicate, ghostly, and impossibly rich in detail.
This method, demanding in both time and patience, collapses the boundary between photographer and medium. Each image becomes a one-of-a-kind artifact, marked by streaks, cracks, and chemical unpredictability. Yet these imperfections are part of its beauty, echoing a time when photography was as much a physical ritual as a visual act.
In a world driven by speed and automation, the wet plate collodion process offers something radically different: slowness, intention, and intimacy. It asks the photographer to return to the roots of the medium—not just to capture a moment, but to build it, layer by layer, with light and silver.
Frith, Francis | Frith's monumental photographic record of the Middle East
Image Courtesy: Sothebys
Yamamoto MasaoAmbrotype #62, 2022
Image Courtesy: Jackson Fine Art
Sally Mann, The Quality of The Affection, 2006
Sally Mann, Hephaestus, 2008
Sally Mann´s photographic study of her husband Larry Mann, taken over six years, has resulted in a series of candid nude studies of a mature male body that neither objectifies nor celebrates the focus of its gaze. Rather it suggests a profoundly trusting relationship between woman and man, artist and model that has produced a full range of impressions – erotic, brutally frank, disarmingly tender, and more. While the relation of artist and model is, traditionally, a male-dominated field that has yielded countless appraisals of the female body and psyche, Mann reverses the role by turning the camera on her husband during some of his most vulnerable moments.
Mann's technical methods and process further emphasize the emotional and temporal aspects of these fragile life studies. The images are contact prints made from wet-plate collodion negatives, produced by coating a sheet of glass with ether-based collodion and submerging it in silver nitrate. Mann exploits the surface aberrations that can result from the unpredictability of the process to produce painterly photographs marked by stark contrasts of light and dark, with areas that resemble scar tissue. In works such as Hephaestus and Ponder Heart, the scratches and marks incurred in the production process become inseparable from the physical reality of Larry's body.
Triptych, 2004, Sally Mann.
Image Credit:
The Sir Elton John Photography Collection. © Sally Mann
Although most nineteenth-century photographers worked hard to craft flawless negatives, Mann recognized the poetic potential of technical imperfections. Chance became a determining element of her method, and she found herself praying to the “angel of uncertainty,” believing that “aesthetic luck . . . is just the ability to exploit accidents.”
Luo Dan, John Ringing The Bell, 2010
Luo Dan, Thanksgiving party, Wawa Village, 2010
The work-ethic of Sally Mann, whose intricate photographic techniques record the historical scars and romanticism of the South, is as she takes photos both in her studio and outdoors. The farm where Mann lives and works becomes a meaningful backdrop as her inspired process of capturing it on film is revealed.
This video from the Getty Museum offers a clear, detailed demonstration of the wet plate collodion process. Valued for the richness of its prints and the ability to produce multiple copies, the method flourished from the 1850s to around 1880, becoming a cornerstone of early photography.
An on-location demonstration by photographer Adrian Cook, who uses one of the oldest photographic processes to create unique images on aluminium plates. Guardian Australia’s picture editor, Jonny Weeks, joins him in a portable darkroom for a shoot on Sydney Harbour. Cook walks through his process and reflects on the enduring appeal of wet plate collodion photography in the digital age.
