HILL END PRESS: Bill Moseley of Hill End Press launches his 8 x 10 tin type exhibition called Nightshade.

Amongst printing our beautiful letterpress stationery,

very busy Bill has also been working towards his exhibition which is opening

at the

Dubbo Western Plains Cultural Centre

14th December 2013 at 2.00pm

on till 2nd February 2014

called

NIGHTSHADE

Tin types and wet plate collodion photography.

(Here's an insight to this extraordinary antiquarian photographic practice)

Discovered by Frederick Archer in 1851, became the most popular technique for capturing an image well into the 20th century. These images are 'tintypes' which is a variation of the wet plate process, where a thin negative is created on a glossy black surface. The image 'reverses' itself on viewing under direct light, the deposited silver reflecting the light and appearing as 'white' in the image.

Quiet Entrance - Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tintype 2013

Also known as 'ambrotype', this process brings back the magic of surface to an image and has attracted many adherents dissatisfied b the ubiquitous inkject imagery that floods exhibition spaces. As well as the rich and unusual tonality, there is a sense of random unpredictability (at least to the practitioner) who must transport his or her portable darkroom to the subject. From the coating of the plate, exposure and development, there is a maximum interval of around 10 minutes. Each plate has it's own signature of how the collodion was poured and sensitised. An historian could discern whether a photographer was right or left handed.

Remembered Fragment - Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tintype 2013

There is a different way of looking at cllodion (tintype) photographs. The familiar tonalities of a black and white image are upturned, red are seen as greens as black, blue disappear, and one is forced to engage in an all-over way with the image. That is to say, that familiar foreground, middle ground and distance tonal values are subverted somewhat, creating an uncanny sense of timelessness.

Not unexpectedly, the art of wetplate photography has been greatly revived not just by artists, but by history enthusiasts concerned with the American civil war. Civil war reenactment photographs (even aerial ones!) have been deliberately staged to create a suspension of disbelief.

Early tintypes had no such artistic pretension, they were the cheap polaroids (remember them?) of the day. They could be produced quickly and cheaply on blackened iron, the fixing image could be trimmed with scissors and placed in a cheap folded card frame.

Owl - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

For all that, it's a difficult technique to master and the chemicals are harder to obtain now than in the 19th century, (they're all 'dangerous goods'). But there are some modern refinements, the plates no longer have to be laboriously 'black japanned', as gloss black 'trophy' aluminium is available, as is acrylic sheet.

The exhibition has been inspired by the landscape at Hill End where Bill lives and Oberon.