Will Dunniway
New member
I have been a professional graphic artist and photographer for over 40 years and a student of American history. I practice the 19th century art of wet plate collodion photography using original cameras and lens in making my images ~ as if I were painting with a wet emulsion of silver and light. I have pursued the avocation of artist/photographer now for over 40 years. As long as I can remember I have enjoyed the early photographic processes. I began learning the wet plate collodion process in the summer of 1990. My first decade has been spent perfecting this ‘Victorian’ form of imagery. Gradually, I have began to explore this collodion process in less traditional ways.
With these changes, one can see in these new collodion images the many waves, ripples, pours, and movements captured as this wet collodion slows, forming puddles, drips, etc. Poured onto a glass plate, collodion forms it’s own glacial movements, no two plates alike as the landscape is captured ~ all layers of a story ~ the result? ~ sharpness and softness simultaneously speaking of the mystery of the human condition.
The images I make reach across three different centuries and tell us about a time past, now newly examined and interpreted. My work is about beautiful natural things, with a sensibility of a 19th century eye, but layered in new meaning to the 21st century viewer. In the 19th century, when this camera that I now use was birthed there was so much death and anger in America, many of the famous photographers of the time like Timothy O’ Sullivan, Carelton Watkins and William Henry Jackson were turning toward landscape. The great American west seemed vast and wild compared to the destruction of the east. These times were portrayed by these photographers through their images.
Now, in the 21st century I approach these same subjects capturing the west as tamed and vanishing; a way of life all but gone and as fleeting as the equipment I shoot with.
You can view my work at both of my very different web sites. One is contemporary and the other historical: Web sites ~ http://www.dunniway.com
http://www.collodion-artist.com
With these changes, one can see in these new collodion images the many waves, ripples, pours, and movements captured as this wet collodion slows, forming puddles, drips, etc. Poured onto a glass plate, collodion forms it’s own glacial movements, no two plates alike as the landscape is captured ~ all layers of a story ~ the result? ~ sharpness and softness simultaneously speaking of the mystery of the human condition.
The images I make reach across three different centuries and tell us about a time past, now newly examined and interpreted. My work is about beautiful natural things, with a sensibility of a 19th century eye, but layered in new meaning to the 21st century viewer. In the 19th century, when this camera that I now use was birthed there was so much death and anger in America, many of the famous photographers of the time like Timothy O’ Sullivan, Carelton Watkins and William Henry Jackson were turning toward landscape. The great American west seemed vast and wild compared to the destruction of the east. These times were portrayed by these photographers through their images.
Now, in the 21st century I approach these same subjects capturing the west as tamed and vanishing; a way of life all but gone and as fleeting as the equipment I shoot with.
You can view my work at both of my very different web sites. One is contemporary and the other historical: Web sites ~ http://www.dunniway.com
http://www.collodion-artist.com
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