Adrian Cook and the vintage caravan he uses as a studio. Photo / Supplied
Adrian Cook and the vintage caravan he uses as a studio. Photo / Supplied
Stunning, atmospheric, black-and-white collodion photographs were once a thing of the past, but photographer Adrian Cook has resurrected the wet plate process.
As part of Whanganui Heritage Month, Cook is offering portrait sessions at the Sarjeant Gallery on Saturday and Sunday, October 29-30.
The 45-minute long process, popular in the mid-to-late 1800s, produces a unique, hand-made photograph that could be passed down as a family heirloom.
The wet plate process was invented in 1851 by English photographer Frederick Scott Archer, who discovered that if he coated a sheet of glass with salted collodion and immersed it into a bath of silver nitrate, it would become light sensitive.
"The only downside being that the plate had to be exposed and developed whilst still wet - hence the name," Cook said.
While the process is old and part of Heritage Month, he says it is not necessary to wear old-style clothing.
"I'm trying to do a heritage process in a modern context. It's 2022 so if you turn up wearing your jeans and Nikes, that's fine. I want people to look back and say that's how they dressed in 2022. In the past people really made an effort. They turned up in their best clothes of the day. One woman brought her own makeup artist."
In the 1800s there was no flash system. Cook says that is why people in photographs back then look a bit glum.
"They were told not to smile as there was a three to four-second exposure – you can't hold a smile for that long unless you are a naturally very smiley person. So the instructions were 'don't smile'."
Keeping still was imperative and a two-pronged brace camouflaged by cloth was set up to cradle people's heads.
Cook uses a modern-day flash and people can smile if they wish, but he says very few do.
"Most people are quite reserved in front of the camera. You don't get a big beamer any more, and also you've only got one go at it. Quite often I'll leave them smiling [to prepare the glass plate] and when I come back they have changed their mind. It's as if 'this is who I am'; it's quite honest and they seem to like it."
A wet plate portrait. Photo / Adrian Cook
People will sit for their portraits inside the Sarjeant and will be able to watch the image magically emerge as the chemicals interact.
An award-winning commercial photographer, Cook is based in Te Aroha after moving with his family from Australia. He travels to destinations around New Zealand in a 1950s Bond-wood caravan, which serves as a mobile darkroom.
"I've worked as a photographer for over 35 years with a lot of that time being spent in the darkroom. About seven years ago, uninspired by the predictability and monotony of digital photography, I began teaching myself the wet plate collodion process in an effort to recreate the aesthetic qualities and characteristics lost with the demise of film."
He now works on personal projects and advertising campaigns using wet plate techniques, both in the studio and on the road from his caravan.
He says many other photographers are doing the colloidal process, mainly in the US but there are some in New Zealand.
"I may be the only photographer doing it to this scale in New Zealand, but that may change as young people are adopting it and shooting film cameras again."
Adrian Cook's Wet Plate Portrait sessions at Sarjeant on the Quay are on Saturday and Sunday, October 29-30, between 10.30am and 4pm. Each session is $150 and lasts 45 minutes. There is a limit of two people a plate. Bookings are essential via events.humanitix.com/sarjeant
Plates will be posted to clients when varnished and cured, a week or so after their session.
