13 Wet Plate Collodion Photographers You Need to Know in 2024!
When I made my first tintype in 2008, I recognized this was the road on which I wanted to travel, and I began searching for the other tintypists out there to learn about who they were and what they were making. It was a whole new world to me and I wanted to see who else was out there. Some of you will remember what it was like to search online in 2008 --it is not like today. Similarly, the number of photographers out there practicing wet plate collodion were few and far between. Seriously few and far between. When Michael Behlen asked me to produce a list of Twenty Wet Plate Collodion Photographers You Should Know, I was simultaneously honored and concerned. Twenty is a lot! However, 2024 is not 2008 and there are dozens and dozens --- hundreds --hundreds of hundreds?-- of wet plate photographers now.
Twenty is still a lot. So mine is a list of 13.
I acknowledge that I do not actively seek out the works of my fellow tintypists and wet platers very often. To my fellow wet platers, please forgive me! It is not because I am not interested in what you are doing! I am interested! Years and years and years ago, as I became increasingly more serious about being "a photographer," I attempted to pay less attention to the works made by my fellow photographers as a way to provide myself as much creative space to not be influenced by my contemporaries. I want what I am seeing or feeling or experiencing in my day-to-day life to be the engine of my creations, and if I am paying too close attention to what other creatives are making, it may over-influence me, or it may depress me (I am not good enough) or it may hold me back. This is pretty much impossible, of course. I love looking at photographs, after all, and I did say "attempted." So of course I am, we are, influenced by the artists around us...this will always happen. I simply try to minimize it. So there you are, my mea culpa.
As a natural-light wet plate photographer, and one who is often making tintypes whilst on the road, I am often drawn to tintypes and ambrotypes made in a similar way. I am familiar with the many challenges involved in making these plates and can be mystified or impressed by--or envious of-- what others are making. And sometimes they can give me a frame of reference for analyzing my own work, because I don't have a personal relationship to it from which to distract me. Aside from the challenges of wet plate, there is the technique, the subject matter, the varying perspectives and the experimentation. And there is a fine balance between the imperfections and the perfection --some work and some do not.
So here I present to you thirteen wet plate collodion photographers I think you should know...in no particular order. And full disclosure, I know there are others out there who should be on this list....this is just one list.
-Jenny Sampson
13 Wet Plate Collodion Photographers You Need to Know in 2024!
Yasu Matsumoto
one-big-tree.com | @yasumatsumoto
Yasu Matsumoto studied photography with Linda Connor at San Francisco Art Institute. Now, working internationally based in Tokyo. He uses photography to capture the invisible.
Colby Rostam Sadeghi
colbysadeghi.com | @colbysadeghi
Colby Rostam Sadeghi (b. 1983, US ) is an Iranian-American photographic artist residing in Brooklyn, New York. Sadeghi’s work is made using one of the earliest photographic techniques, producing one-off positives onto glass and enameled iron plates. Sadeghi embraces this medium and the process imposed by its use as it compels him to take a slow, mindful approach to the intimate moment he is connecting with in real time. Sadeghi's work often explores the value of solitude and introspection in the human experience. Encouraging subjects to slowly sink into themselves, his images convey a sense of distance and detachment and invite the viewer to explore the emotional resonance of the pictures.
Kari Orvik
kariorvik.com | @kariorviktintypes
Kari Orvik is a photo-based artist and educator. Her work engages ideas of presence and absence through portraiture and site-specific narratives, across multiple photographic formats. She has been an artist in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, RecologySF, Rayko Photo Center and Kala Art Institute. Her work has shown at SFO Airport Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Oakland Museum of California and SF Camerawork, and she currently teaches photography at Stanford University.
Joni Sternbach
jonisternbach.com | @jstersurf
Joni Sternbach is an American artist, large format photographer, and filmmaker. She experiments with a variety of historic photographic processes and is best known for her wet plate collodion tintype portraits of surfers and surfboards, made around the globe. Her work is held many public collections including The Nelson Atkins Museum and High Museum. She is the author of four monographs, with the most recent being Kissing A Stranger, published by Durer Editions in 2022.
Sophie Caretta | @sophiecaretta
Sophie Caretta was born in 1967 in France. She has lived in Italy, Argentina where she studied architecture and photography. She studied cinematography in Paris at the Femis. She currently lives and work in New York where she directs commercials. The last 13 years she was focused on developing personal photography projects. Her chosen form of expression is an early photography process called wet plate collodion. She strives to tell a story, complete in itself, sometimes transcending time.
Euphis Ruth
www.euphusruth.com | @photogmaneuphus
Euphus Ruth grew up in Bruce Mississippi. After college in Memphis, he settled in the Mississippi Delta town of Greenville where he worked for a public utility. His interest in photography started as a teenager. Now retired, Ruth is a full-time photographer. He practices collodion and film photography using large and ultra-large format vintage cameras and lenses. His subject matter is primarily older architecture, cemeteries, cityscapes, and landscapes. He returns to the same places to experience and photograph the change brought on by man and nature.
Emma Powell
emmapowell.photo | @emmaobscura
Emma Powell is a photographic artist who primarily utilizes alternative and historic processes. Powell earned an MFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology and taught photography for a decade at Colorado College and Iowa State University. In addition, Powell has led workshops for Penland School of Crafts, Maine Media, and other educational institutions.
S. Gayle Stevens
sgaylestevens.com | @sgaylestevens
S. Gayle Stevens has worked in antiquarian photographic processes for over fifteen years. Her chosen medium is wet plate collodion for its fluidity and individuality. Named one of the Critical Mass Top Fifty Photographers for 2010 and 2014, she received second place in the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards in 2011 and was named a finalist for the Clarence John Laughlin Award in 2012 and 2014. Her work has been featured in Fraction, Square, Shots, Diffusion, B + W Photography, South by Southeast and Fuzion magazines and in the recently published book Inventing Reality, New Orleans Visionary Photography. North Light Press published a book of Stevens’ work, Calligraphy, in their 11 + 1 Signature series. Stevens’ work is widely collected and is part of the permanent collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Rockford Museum of Art and the Center for Fine Art Photography and recently the University of New Mexico Art Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, among others. A member of the Posse photo collective, she divides her time shooting in Pass Christian, Mississippi and Downers Grove, Illinois, where she resides.
Ella Morton
www.ellamorton.com | @ellasharpmorton
Ella Morton is a Canadian visual artist and filmmaker living in Toronto. Her expedition-based practice has brought her to residencies and projects across Canada, Scandinavia and Antarctica. Working primarily with lens-based media, she uses experimental analogue processes to capture the sublime and fragile qualities of remote landscapes. Reflecting on how the medium of photography is changing in the digital age, she aims to uncover how photographs can show more than a straightforward depiction of reality, and how the alchemy of analogue techniques can be reinvented in the present day to tell deeper stories within images.
Rachel Portesi
rachelportesiphotography.com | @rachel.portesi
Rachel Portesi received a BA in Sociology and Photography from Marlboro College, VT. Her recent work in tintype, Polaroid, 3-D imagery and video installation explores how female identity is redefined by motherhood and aging. Portesi’s photographs have been exhibited at various venues in New England and in New York, and have been written about in Vogue, Forbes, Boston Globe and Musée magazines among others. She works and lives with her family in Saxtons River, Vermont.
Christian Klant
christian-klant.com | @christian.klant_photography
In my former professional life, as a graduate in business administration, I supported companies in matters of sustainability and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). As a photographer, I am self-taught and after a few exclusively digital years and a double somersault back- wards in photographic history, I find myself as a specialist in handmade and analogue photography.
Our nature and values like mindfulness and authenticity are the common thread of my free works. These are intended to inspire and open up new perspectives and are exhibited internationally.
As the editor of the Art Lab Podcast, trustee of the Stiftung Photographie Schwarzweiß and deputy speaker of the German Photo Council, I am committed to photography. Research projects on Gustave Le Gray, among others, for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam enrich my work. Furthermore, I am an appointed member of the DGPh as well as of the DFA and BFF Professional.
As a passionate printer, I not only put my own work on paper, but also have the honour of doing so for selected colleagues. The process to the finished image is a wonderful journey every time.
Susan Seubert
seubertfineart.com | @susanseubert
Award winning photographer Susan Seubert was born in 1970 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ms. Seubert is an active fine art and journalism photographer based in Portland, Oregon and Maui, Hawaii. Her provocative imagery has earned her critical acclaim with inclusion in the Portland Art Museum's 1999 and 2001 Biennials, the 2009 Tacoma Art Museum's Northwest Biennial and selected as a finalist for the 2011 Contemporary Northwest Artist Awards. Ms. Seubert was selected to be one of only 24 participants in Portland2012, A Biennial of Contemporary Art, presented by Disjecta and curated by Prudence Roberts. In 1999 Columbia University in conjunction with LIFE Magazine awarded Ms. Seubert an Alfred Eisenstaedt Award.
David Emitt Adams
davidemittadams.com | @davidemittadams
David Emitt Adams is a photographer based in Phoenix, Arizona. David’s photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally including museum exhibitions at Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum, Southern Utah Museum of Art, Tucson Museum Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Portland Art Museum. He is a recipient of the Arizona Commission on the Arts Research and Development Grant, the Clarence John Laughlin Award, and the Puffin Foundation Grant. His work is in the permanent collection of The Center for Creative Photography, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The George Eastman Museum, and The Worcester Art Museum as well as numerous private collections.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Jenny Sampson, born and raised in San Francisco, is a Berkeley-based photographer. She earned a B.A. in Psychobiology in 1991 at Pitzer College and has since dedicated her time to her photographic endeavors. Sampson’s focus is with wet plate collodion (tintypes), traditional black and white photography, and commissioned portraiture. She writes and photogrphs for WithItGirl, is a member of the Rolls and Tubes Collective and acting Board President of the East Bay Photo Collective. Her monographs, Skaters and Skater Girls were published by Daylight Books in 2017 and 2020, respectively. A History of Photography, by Rolls and Tubes was published in 2021.
RELATED ARTICLES
Forget your preconceived notions of what "street" photography is or should be. Discover 20 international street photographers you need to know in 2023, curated by writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Jesse Freeman of Japan Camera Hunter, that challenges the Western ideas of street photography.