Some Wet Plate Work In China

[Hugo Zhang]

Wet plate is getting hot in China, spearheaded by Tuant in this forum and some others. I know some 24x32" or 36"(?) wet plate cameras are in the making. But I found the work, "Simple Song", of this Chinese wet plate artist very inspiring.

For his “Simple Song” project, Luo Dan employed the traditional collodion wet plate photographic process invented in 1850, spending several months traveling with a portable darkroom in remote and mountainous regions of China’s southern Yunnan Province. Looking to capture the purity of this photographic process, Luo Dan was able to reflect the authenticity found in rural life for many of China’s yet undeveloped regions, where the way of life has remained largely intact for hundreds of years. Many of the villages in this region were settled by Christian missionaries 100 years ago, where the local villagers are people of faith and devout churchgoers dressing up in their ethnic garments, or Sunday’s best. By bringing a reverence to both this photographic process and subject matter, Luo Dan’s “Simple Song” series is an effort to capture a sense of timelessness. An incredibly popular process in the mid-nineteenth century, wet plate collodion could render exquisite detail for photographers, but the laborious process of exposure and development also led to its decline towards the end of the century.
An acclaimed portrait and documentary photographer, Luo Dan has won numerous awards and recognition for his works “On the Road - Highway 318” (2006) and “North – South” (2008). Luo Dan was born in Chongqing, China, in 1968 and graduated from the Sichuan Fine Art Academy in 1992. He was given the Gold Award for Outstanding Artist at the Lianzhou International Photography Festival in 2008 for his body of work “North, South” (2008). This year he was recently awarded the Hou Dengke documentary photography prize, as well as voted best new photographer at the Dali International Photography Festival (2011). He currently lives and works in Chengdu, China.


http://www.m97gallery.com/artist/?artist=luo_dan&from=1

[Monty McCutchen]

Hugo,

Thanks for the link. Those are beautiful plates. Would love to see a 24 by 36 Wet Plate image in the flesh. For now I'll stick with the small stuff!

Monty

[Rain Dance]

Those are beautiful images. I like the look they have.

[ghostcount]

Awesome. Thanks Hugo.

[Jan Pedersen]

Thanks for posting Hugo. Wonderful work. 24x36", i can't even imagine the size.

[sully75]

that was awesome.

[Richard K.]

Thanks for the link to that amazing work, Hugo.

How much did you say a 18x22 with 2 holders would be? Maybe you better PM me that information, otherwise you'll be swamped with orders!! :eek:

[Hugo Zhang]

Thanks for the link to that amazing work, Hugo.

How much did you say a 18x22 with 2 holders would be? Maybe you better PM me that information, otherwise you'll be swamped with orders!! :eek:

Richard,

Are you getting into 18x22 wet plate? If you don't want to wait for a year, you can try 16x20 wet plate for now. See this one in action in Shanghai:

http://forum.xitek.com/showthread.php?threadid=925958

We can discuss this in PM. :)
Hugo

[sully75]

Hugo,

Just wondering, does Luo Dan have a book of that work? I'd buy it.

Paul

[Mark Sawyer]

Just another "thank you for the link", Hugo! Wonderful work like that is always good to see.

Large plates, for me at least, are only as impressive as the work that is on them. Luo Dan is setting the standard pretty high...

[Hugo Zhang]

Hass, owner and designer of Chamonix view cameras, took a wet plate lesson from Tuant a year ago and now he spends his time in Tibet doing his 16x20 plate work while waiting for his bigger camera. There are two pictures he made in Tibet in this page.

http://forum.xitek.com/showthread.php?threadid=738533&pagenumber=20

[Hugo Zhang]

Hugo,

Just wondering, does Luo Dan have a book of that work? I'd buy it.

Paul

Paul,

I don't know. But you can email the gallery on that link and they will tell you. I think the responses so far are very good and they may come out with a book.

Thanks.
hugo

[sully75]

For the record, from Hugo's post, I'm not totally sure these are large plates. It just says they are plates.

[Hugo Zhang]

Paul,

These were 8x10 glass plates and processed in a minivan converted mobile darkroom, I read.

Hugo

[Richard K.]

||||||| now he spends his time in Tibet doing his 16x20 plate work while waiting for his bigger camera.||||||

BIGGER? What size? :)

[Andrew Plume]

Hugo

thanks indeed for posting this

regards

andrew

[Kerik Kouklis]

Nice work, thanks for posting the link.

[jnantz]

Hass, owner and designer of Chamonix view cameras, took a wet plate lesson from Tuant a year ago and now he spends his time in Tibet doing his 16x20 plate work while waiting for his bigger camera. There are two pictures he made in Tibet in this page.

http://forum.xitek.com/showthread.php?threadid=738533&pagenumber=20

that's one big holder ( boy holding / displaying it )

thanks for the links hugo, i love timeless images

[dperez]

Wow! Amazing photography. Incredible work coming from China. Thanks for sharing. I would love to just have a peak under the dark cloth of a 16x20 or 20x24 camera, that would be something I'm sure.

[Songyun]

Hugo,
I think Hass was using 12X20 in Tibet, not 16X20. And the new one is not 24X32, slightly smaller.

For ppl who are interested, these 12X20 plates are nice, make sure read the stories behind the plates.

[matthew blais]

Nice...I have been to that Gallery and they always have nice work showing.

[Asher Kelman]

These pictures are wonderful. Is this some special wet place? Seems the best I've seen.

Asher

[David Hedley]

Interesting and technically admirable. I do find several of the photographs to be awkward and reminiscent of 19th century colonialists assembling collections of ethnic material - a form of orientalism which gives an illusion of the exotic and remote, when the reality is quite different.

[goamules]

Interesting and technically admirable. I do find several of the photographs to be awkward and reminiscent of 19th century colonialists assembling collections of ethnic material - a form of orientalism which gives an illusion of the exotic and remote, when the reality is quite different.

I think a lot of photography is assembling the composition to communicate something you want to show. It's not often straight documentary. When one takes a picture of a lake, do they try to avoid the power line that runs right beside it? There is a lot of replication of past eras in photography, more so in wetplate (Civil War reenactment tintypers, etc.). I personally like to see older, not commonly worn costumes. Many later photographers in the West did the same thing with the American Indians.

[Asher Kelman]

Interesting and technically admirable. I do find several of the photographs to be awkward and reminiscent of 19th century colonialists assembling collections of ethnic material - a form of orientalism which gives an illusion of the exotic and remote, when the reality is quite different.

David,

It's as if the Chinese artist is making "Genuine" versions of pictures that a photographer of "American Indian" or white settler or miners would have made in 1901, when the folk would have to dress for the part. Still, the craft here is so far different from what I've seen here with wet plate. Are we talking about some other technique perhaps?

Asher

[Riccis]

This is top notch work. Thanks for sharing!