Tintypes & Old Time Musicians

[Peter Lewin]

Seems like the NY Times is on a run of articles based on LF photography. Today's offering was an article on a photographer making a portfolio of old-time string musicians, using tintypes as her medium. Thought this would appeal to many of you: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/lens/tintype-portraits-musicians-appalachia.html

[Oren Grad]

http://www.lisaelmaleh.com/

She teaches wet plate workshops regularly at the Penumbra Foundation in NYC.

[goamules]

Look like some nice plates. As always, the South is shown as kind of backwards, quaint and from an earlier era. Which it can be at times. But I note everyone in her pictures is in appropriate costume. All are in overalls, chambray shirts, no logo's on T-shirts or even CAT diesel power hats, which were ubiquitous from my youth in the South. Everyone is shown stepping out of deep, dark ivy or standing in creeks. Why don't people in NYC show "real New Yorkers" dressed up in 1910s tattered tweed and hanging out in tenement alleys? Wet plate makes everything more romantic and "old timey."

[Oren Grad]

Why don't people in NYC show...

Not clear which people you have in mind with this, but FWIW, Lisa Elmaleh grew up in Florida and lives in West Virginia.

That said, it seems to be a challenge to produce work with wet plate that isn't self-consciously quaint.

[Mike in NY]

I studied wet plate, platinum/palladium printing, and kalitype contact printing with Lisa years ago at the Center for Alternative Photography (Penumbra Foundation) in NYC. She's an excellent teacher and very accomplished wet plate artist. Her book of ferrotypes that she photographed in the Everglades was very well received (not mentioned in the article). Here's a photo of the two of us measuring out chemicals at the Center for Alternative Photography, taken about seven years ago. And here are a couple of ferrotypes of me with one of my five banjos, taken that same day. (The banjo was custom made for me by Mike Ramsey, well-known banjo maker located in my home state of North Carolina.)

189282. 189283. 189284

[Ron McElroy]

Bill Steber does some interesting wetplate work in the delta. He is also a musician.
http://www.steberphoto.com/

[Mark Crabtree]

Congratulations to Lisa. I met her when she first came to W.Va. to photograph old time musicians. She showed up at a 90 year old friend Ralph Roberts' house and he didn't know what to think, so called me. Lisa talked to me on his phone and I told my friend that she seemed legit. I've considered her to be a friend ever since. I know some of the people in her pictures; I suppose nearly all of the West Virginians. The tintype Lisa made of Ralph in front of his woodshed that first day we talked is one of my favorites; I've tried unsuccessfully to buy it from her.

Lisa liked West Virginia and the people so well that she moved to a cabin here that belongs to one of the musicians she met. I finally got over for a visit last fall and it is a lovely spot, and pretty basic living with woodstove heat and a hand pump just outside the kitchen. Lisa is a talented and sincere woman who is finding a way to get by doing her work the way she wants to do it. I find her a great inspiration, and will credit her with getting me interested in large format for personal work again (I've made my living with a Cirkut).

[Mike in NY]

She has an interesting Facebook feed that I follow; I enjoy keeping up with her work.