Description back in the mid 1800s around the time of the american civil war, there were wet plate tintypes + ambrotypes. tintypes were made on blackened metal, ambrotypes were made the same way on glass. they were a 1 of a kind image, no negative and unable to be reproduced. in the late 1800s silver gelatin replaced collodion as a photographic medium. the tintypes ( ferrotypes ) i make are by using liquid silver emulsion coated myself on metal. i hand process the image in a special developer i created that reverses it. this one didn't reverse, it is a positive print. sometimes i hand color them, like i do with cyanotypes i make.this is one i made the other day.
J Nanian, Warwick, RI Member Since November 2007 Artist Statement Hello, I am a working photographer, who uses a variety of processes to make photographs. Most work here originates as a sheet of paper, glass metal or plastic that is coated with light sensitive materials. I use coffee as a film and paper developer. Some of the photographs you see here are made using a 200 year old process and the images are photographs that are unstable. Scanning them is the only way to preserve them. Other images here are cyanotypes, a process invented in the 1840s that uses 2 iron based compounds that convert to a stable image when in the presence of ultra violet light.