Dark Silver: Portraits from the 8x10

Dark Silver is an ongoing project devoted to creating black and white photographic portraits via traditional silver gelatin film and paper. Portraits are created with large and medium format vintage film cameras, and result in beautiful, one of a kind silver gelatin negatives and prints, hand processed in a traditional darkroom. The process is slower and less “perfect” than modern digital imaging, but the process informs the aesthetic: rich silver-based images where time and light are carefully measured and refracted through the lens onto the film. The project consists of several series of portraits made within specific technical and conceptual parameters, and have been created over several sessions spanning the last two years. The first series were created with the 8x10 view camera, with subjects recruited from acquaintances through social media. Portraits were lit with strong, directional light, creating dramatic, sometimes heroic images. The subjects were instructed to simply show up for a somewhat formal portrait, with or without props, and given a mark to stand or sit. They were then given a few directions as to posing, and four to six sheets of film were exposed. The resulting photographs reveal a peculiar formality which the subjects weren’t necessarily aware of. Final selections were enlarged to 20x24 toned prints. The images included here were all scanned from silver gelatin contact sheets.