How did those Wet Plate togs get perfect plates compared w dirty modern stuff?

[Frank Petronio]

How come when I see pictures from Wet Plate Collodion photographers like Timothy O'Sullivan and Vittorio Sella they are almost flawless? But based on the plates I see being made by all these modern artsy-craftsy type photographers, I thought wet plates were supposed to be all crunchy and scratched up, with bits of loam and twigs embedded in them?

I mean those pioneering photographers were on mountain tops with mules and weather and crap everywhere.... So with all their primitive technology, how did they get them so darn perfect?

Is there anyone working today who is doing CLEAN wet plates? Or are they all chasing that Sally Mann money... I mean aesthetic... ? Or is it just THAT hard that nobody can match the quality of the old timers anymore?

Jeezum Crow, they were making 20x24s 1000 miles off into the woods!

[BarryS]

Photographers like Timothy O'Sullivan cut their teeth in top notch studios like Matthew Brady's. Those early studios made plates from dawn to dusk (or as long as they had light) and the studio managers knew everything there was to know about wet plate. Lesser photographers from small studios made plenty of crappy plates that you can find today. I don't think there are any modern wet plate practioners that come anywhere near the sheer volume of plates done by a 19th c photographer.

The modern aesthetic also embraces some level of defects--probably a reaction against the easy perfection of digital. However, most serious wet plate photographers at least aspire to the ability of consistently making plates with a minimum of defects. As a wet plate artist friend remarked to me--we'd be fired from a decent 19th c studio.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

Nate Gibbons makes clean ULF tintypes http://www.nwgibbons.com/

[Kirk Keyes]

As a wet plate artist friend remarked to me--we'd be fired
from a decent 19th c studio.

That's a great quote!

[Bruce Watson]

How come when I see pictures from Wet Plate Collodion photographers like Timothy O'Sullivan and Vittorio Sella they are almost flawless?

Part of the reason is that flawed plates from Mr. O'Sullivan and company got scraped and reused in the field. So there's no crappy plates available for you to look at.

[Mark Sawyer]

More thoughts:

The flaws are usually around the edges, and the edges were cropped off as a matter of routine.

As Barry noted, these were full-time wet-plate photographers. You can't expect to do something occassionally and have the same command a master has. Master musicians practice hours each day, a new potter throws a thousand pots and destroys them before he makes keeper, (at least according to the old addage), but we just jump right in and think we'll get it right.

A lot of wet plate photographers enjoy the "artifacts". Indeed, if you want "perfection", why not buy machine-made perfect materials? Some film and digital photographers are even faking wet-plate artifacts on their conventional images! (On a related note, you never see the Petzval swirl in old Petzval images, but today, it's a sought-after signature.)

All that said, I could make a pretty clean plate within a couple of months of learning the process, (and I wasn't devoting myself to it full-time). These days, I find myself leaving some artifacts in, even though I could easily remove them during the processing.

[Bill_1856]

Retouching was an art which had to be mastered by all successful photographers in those days.

[Paul_C]

The modern aesthetic also embraces some level of defects--probably a reaction against the easy perfection of digital.

I'm reading "The Nature and Art of Workmanship" by David Pye right now and came across an interesting section along these lines (for context, earlier he makes significant distinction between "free" and "regulated" work [e.g. modern wet plate vs. circa 19th c wet plate or modern digital]):

Precision and regularity in those days signified that, to the extent of his intellect, man stood apart from nature, and had a power of his own.

It is really very difficult indeed for us to realize what precision and regularity must have meant and how moving they must have been, when now they are seen in every trivial product of a money-bound society: in the throw-away ball-point pen and the tomato-can. The reflections of the natural order which we see and value in rough or free workmanship must then have seemed far less amiable, a mere reminder of what men wished to part from and be less involved with, now that they lived in cities. We, on the other hand, would do better to make things occasionally so that they do reflect our community with the natural order instead of emphasizing our separation from it; and so that their diversity would stave off the monotony which comes of too much regularity and precision. What was their meat will soon be our poison.

He continues further along with the caveat:

A brisk element of improvisation reflecting the natural order is one thing; but there is an element of improvisation in plain bad workmanship too. The use of free workmanship no more guarantees aesthetic quality than does the use of oil-paint.

and concludes the topic:

But even supposing that every bit of regulated and of free work were good of its kind there could still be no question of establishing the absolute superiority of one kind to the other. Their value is relative to their time and circumstances. Regulation once had a meaning which it no longer has; while free workmanship begins to mean what it can never have meant before.

[Vaughn]

Compare these 29"x40" gum bichromate prints with any gum prints you might have seen elsewhere.

http://www.livick.com/archives/portraits/pg2.htm

There is what people do, and then there is what is possible to do.

[Dave Wooten]

Thanks Vaughn