In this era of digital photography and mural-sized color prints, David Sokosh is using the 19th Century Wet-Plate Collodion process as part of the renaissance in hand-crafted photography, on an intimate scale.

Sokosh adds vintage Christmas ornaments to his portfolio of still life Wet-Plate Collodion images, using family pieces from the 1920's through the 1940's as subjects.

WET-PLATE COLLODION:HOW IT WORKS

Sokosh uses original lenses from the period, on cameras of his own design and fabrication. The chemical mixtures are identical to those used in the 19th century. In his only departure from early techniques, Sokosh uses aluminum rather than tin plates.

In our world of digital, mass-produced, photography, Sokosh is drawn to the hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind nature of these photographs. Sokosh says: “I’m a 21st Century person, living in a self-created 19th Century world full of period objects of all kinds. This authentic process lets me explore the mindset of the early photographer/scientist/collector. I’m drawn to the quality of photograph-as-object that Wet-Plate yields, and excited by the hands-on aspect of the process.”