Discovering Glass Plate Negatives

For the past 15 years I have been photographing my relatives farm in Germany creating a large body of work. My images tell the story of my family, the farm itself, the landscape surrounding it and all the nuances and effects of how modern technology has drastically altered the lifestyle of a “small farm.” 

Last year, I met a woman named Elizabeth whose grandmother, Hilma Ljung, was from the small Swedish farm town of Svalöv and took numerous photographs of her family and farm between 1910-1925. Elizabeth told me about the 100 or so glass plate negatives that she had and asked me if I would be interested in them. I could not believe my luck. Upon looking at them, I could instantly visualize what my relatives farm in Germany may have looked like during that era.

What really caught my attention was that they were gelatin dry plate glass negatives. This form of photography is somewhat unique and not all that common. One of the main reasons glass plate negatives mostly disappeared from the consumer market was because of the introduction of the much more user friendly, less fragile gelatin silver negative on celluloid roll film.

Prior to 1903 when the invention of what we know today as film (gelatin silver negative), photographic emulsion was made on glass plates. There were two formats. The wet plate collodion, discovered in 1851 by British inventor Frederick Scott Archer, and the gelatin dry plate negative discovered in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox. Both of these glass plate formats have a light sensitive emulsion that is attached to the glass plate with a binder.

I am currently in the process of combining these two special bodies of work. It is a beautiful story. A sad story. An important story. And a story I am eager to share with you all. 

Below are a few images from Elizabeth’s grandmother Hilma Ljung and myself. The first 4 images are from Hilma and the last 4 are mine. 

Art and Fear

By my bed I have a book that I read and reread all the time. It is Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It is a book that is purposely by my bed because I like to pick it up and randomly open it and see what type of philosophical mind candy I will be digesting throughout the day. I picked it up this morning and read this nugget of a paragraph.

“Artists, naturally, would be the last to admit that, if only because heroic accounts of grueling hours spent building the mold or casting the hot metal remain de riguer of artistic conversation. But while mastering technique is difficult and time-consuming, it’s still inherently easier to reach an already defined goal - a right answer - than to give form to a new idea. It’s easier to paint in the angel’s feet to another’s master-work than to discover where the angels live within yourself. Art that deals with ideas is more interesting than art that deals with technique."

There are times I find myself striving for perfection in the darkroom, being hard on myself for having composed an image a certain way and frustrated an image didn’t come out the way I wanted. In my most recent photography landscape class that I taught at the Image Flow in Mill Valley, I talked about letting go of this idea/concept of perfection. Perfection often times holds ones artwork and vision down. Like the above quote says, let go and relax into new forms and ideas. Let go of comparisons. Find the angel that lives within oneself. A goal of perfection will only hold oneself back.