The
tintype photograph is one that is ubiquitous across many historic and archival
collections. These quickly produced
images were seen as cheap alternatives to the more costly ambro- and
daguerreotypes that dominated the photographic market in the mid nineteenth
century. While these three processes
co-existed and built off similar chemical foundations, the tintype is one that
seems to creep back into the public eye; not necessarily as the documentary
form of its predecessors, but increasingly as an artistic endeavor by
contemporary photographers. This paper
will aim to briefly cover the process of creating a tintype, the evolution of
their subject, and their continued use in the modern age.
The name tintype itself is actually
a bit misleading; tin was rarely used as the actual substrate. Rather, iron was more frequently used and
during their heyday ferrotype (ferro
Latin for iron) and melainotypes (melaino
Greek for black) were the frequently advertised and official names used by
photographers during the period. Like
the ambrotype, collodion is the major chemical process in producing tintypes,
but first the iron has to be covered with black primer (hence the
melainotype). Here is another similarity
with ambrotypes, except a tintype has the black backing directly on the surface
as opposed to backing a glass plate. The
collodion must be carefully applied as it is a flammable, syrupy solution of
cellulose nitrate in ether and alcohol.
Once the collodion firms up a bit, the plate is added to a bath of
silver nitrate where the chemicals will react to create a light sensitive film
of salted silver. Under darkroom
conditions, the plate is removed and placed in a holder, away from light, until
it is time to capture the image.
Historically this process had to be done quickly and the photograph
taken shortly after, however gelatin forms were developed that allowed the
plates to lay in wait for extended periods.
Once the subject is ready, the plate is loaded into the camera, exposed,
then moved to a developer of ferrous sulfate and vinegar (acetic acid) for a
short period. Next, rinse it with water
to stop development and then you are ready fix it. Here is the dangerous part: to get the most
brilliant image out of a tintype during fixing one must use potassium
cyanide. If the developer is not
properly washed off it will react with potassium cyanide to create cyanide gas
and, well, there ends your attempt to become an historic photgrapher. The fixer will remove excess silver and
“etch” the rest of the silver into the plate to create the image. The final step is varnishing and then casing,
which in the past could be simple paper sleeves with existing designs or lovely
enclosures more frequently seen with daguerreotypes.[1]
 |
| Tintype of Unknown Union Soldier. Library of Congress Collection. |
From
its introduction, photography has been used as a form of documentation of what
words cannot capture. When Hamilton
Smith built off of Daguerre’s work and patented the tintype process in the
mid-1850s (no. 14,300, “For the Use of Japanned [darkened] Metallic Plates in
Photography”) he and his colleague Peter Neff continued the portrait images
that dominated the photographic world.
The images examined in class, in books, in exhibits, even these from my
personal collection are portraits of family members:
 |
| Tintype of Authors Great-Great-Great Uncle, Samuel Kline. Author's Collection. |
 |
| Mortuary Tintype of Orlando Reed, Author's Great-Great-Great Uncle. Author's Collection. |
 |
| Tintype of Unknown Man and Woman. Author's Collection. |
Since
the process of a tintype was cheap (twenty-five cents was average) and quick
(2-5 minutes total versus that same time just sitting for a daguerreotype),
those having their photographs taken would represent themselves as best as
possible; wear your Sunday best, or buy a nice new piece since you are saving
money elsewhere. Due to this control
over how they were presenting themselves, some scholars have suggested that the
sitters were the creators, not the photographers. This is a key point as the tintype moves into
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as photographers become the creators
and “artists”. If you look above at the
images of my ancestors, these were poor farmers from rural Indiana and Michigan,
but they present themselves as they wanted: proper ladies and gentlemen of the
middle Victorian period. To say,
however, that tintypes were just of people is misleading. The metal used for tintypes made them
sturdier and lighter than glass plates so photographers began to take these
with them across the United States and document whomever or whatever they could
find. Timothy O’Sullivan, working for
the U.S. Geological Service in the 1870s, took this process down the Colorado
River, and countless other itinerant photographers plied their craft up and
down the rivers of the growing nation.
Images could be mailed to family across the country or overseas, to
loved ones during time of war, or tucked away in your pocket so you can gaze
upon your sweetheart whenever you wanted.[2] The durability of being able to have your
loved ones with you (living or dead) at any time was a major appeal of the
tintype, outside of cost and speed, for the Victorians in America.
As the tintype grew in popularity
and was increasingly associated with amusements, more artistic aspects were
added. Early on there were simple
curtains, columns, chairs, etc., but with time there began to be more festive
backgrounds, props, interesting poses, and photographer directed images. A major figure in the photography world and
in the move away from strictly documentary photographs was Frances Benjamin
Johnston. She did much in the way of
standard documentary and portrait photography, but made her name with a
self-portrait, “New Woman.”
 |
| Frances Benjamin Johnston, "Self-Portrait, New Woman." Image Courtesy of Wikipedia. |
Here
the photographer has posed herself not simply to document who she is but to
represent the changing times through herself.
Her petticoats show (scandalous!) and she proudly holds her beer stein
“like one of the guys.” Johnston was
also heavily involved in the Philadelphia photography scene and helped judge a
short lived competition that is viewed by some historians as expressing tintype
and collodion photography as a new artistic venture, on par with sculpture,
painting, etc. From 1898 to 1901 the
Philadelphia Salon of Photography, with support from the Philadelphia Fine Arts
Institute, put together exhibitions that were focused on the content of the
images and not the technical prowess of the individual photographer. The judging panel of professional
photographers were like Johnston in their desire to move photography into the
artistic realm. This may seem like a no
brainer, photographers judging a photography exhibit, but it was viewed as a
“revolutionary step that not only suggested that photographers might be
esthetically sensitive, but also implied that in this respect they might be the
equals of artists, in the traditional media.”
With the subject matter, style, and support of the Fine Arts group in
Philadelphia, Johnston and her colleagues were able to attempt a breach into
the fine art world. However there was
intense backlash from the art world and the photography world: the former for
photography being basically unskilled and for amateurs, and the latter said the
photos were not realistic enough, too artsy, too posed.[3]
While Johnston and her group made
strides in tintype photography as an art form, it would take the wider art
world much of the early twentieth century to realize that photography itself
could be art. With this accomplished,
individual artistic photographers began to revisit the earlier processes with
an eye on exhibition and story telling.
One recent work that captured the historic and the modern through tintypes
was “Afghanistan, Combat Zone Tintypes.” In 2014 Ed Drew, a staff sergeant and aerial
gunner in the National Guard, decided that a class project would be an
opportune moment to bridge the gap from the earliest soldiers captured on
tintypes in the American Civil War to our present fighting men and women.
 |
| Courtesy of Ed Drew Photography |
 |
| Courtesy of Ed Drew Photography |
These
images not only evoke awe but they connect us to our past. In the 1860s tintypes were the visual proof
of soldiers preparing for or surviving combat, during the 150th
celebration of the Civil War this process still serves the same purpose but how
we view it has changed. I would not call
these documentary photographs, but artistic ones. Yes, in the strict sense they do document
these soldiers, but the emotion they evoke puts them into another realm. The soldier with the flag behind him is
saying something more, the smoking Air Force woman is saying something more,
the squad is saying something more. They
all tell us more than we see. This is
not simply “I am a soldier/person, here I am, at my best” as it was in the 19th
century, but rather they say to the viewer “I am a soldier, a person, a brother,
a sister, I have feelings, I am tired, happy, optimistic.”[4] When I first saw these images the response
was more emotional than when I view a historic tintype in a collection. What caused this though? Perhaps because of the very fact that the
images we see of war today are full color, with multiple angles, and even
dehumanized from blurring or obscured faces.
With these tintypes though my viewing is infected by reverence; I can
connect with these people as people, not soldiers, not images, but people I
could know.
 |
| Courtesy of Ed Drew Phtography |
Other modern photographers are using
historic processes to capture both people and nature as subjects. For a collection of tintype and collodion portraits,
in the old fashioned way but with a more modern, artistic, and emotional focus,
Brett Henrikson has excelled recently. “I
aim for the images to take on the same meditative state that the process offers
me in the darkroom, a simple beauty, a quiet intimacy,” Henrikson says. For a more artistic use of tintype and
collodion, Gayle Stevens photographs nature then arranges the individual
tintypes to create a larger piece that focuses on issues facing the natural
world. Her work “Another Silent Spring”
is an arrangement of different sized tintypes of birds and bugs to bring
attention to colony collapse, pesticide/insecticide issues, and other man-made
destruction of nature.[5] These examples, along with Drew’s tintypes
above, show how the photographer has gained control over what the tintype is
showing. In the Victorian period the
sitters chose how they were represented to the world, but now the photographer
decides how he wants the world to view the subject.
 |
| Untitled. Courtesy of Bret Henrikson Photography. |
 |
| Wideness of the Sea. Courtesy of S. Gayle Stevens Photography |
As the tintype process continues toward
its 160th birthday, it continues to be used by photographers in the
United States. As the photography field has evolved and been embraced by the
art world, tintypes have found a way to stay relevant. Speaking in an archival sense, these
twenty-five cent keepsakes are a large part of our documentary past, and their
low cost shows us a segment of the population that may not have been able to
leave a written record, but still tell us something about themselves from long
ago. This class and this assignment
have, for some reason or another, ignited a serious interest in getting
involved with tintype for me and I am still attempting to understand why I am
fascinated by it. I believe my research
has brought me a bit closer to that.
Tintype was a cheap way for people to make memories in the past,
document their present, and a way for us to show the modern world in a whole
new light.
[1]
Robert A. Weinstein and Larry Booth, Collection,
Use, and Care of Historical Photographs, (Nashville, TN: American
Association for State and Local History, 1977), 162-163; Ed Drew, “Afghanistan,
Combat Zone Tintype,” in War, Literature,
and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, 2014 v. 26, 1-2.
[2]
Floyd Rinhart, Marion Rinhart, and Robert W. Wagner, The American Tintype, (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press,
1999), 9-33, 80-87; “The Birth of the Snapshot,” American History, no. 5 (2008), 48-53.
[3]
Jerald C. Maddox, “Essay on Tintype,” in Library
of Congress Quarterly, 26, 1 (1969), 49-54.
[4]
Drew, 1-14.
[5]Brett
Henrikson Photography, http://www.bretthenrikson.com/
;S. Gayle Stevens at Lens Culture https://www.lensculture.com/s-gayle-stevens.
No comments:
Post a Comment