Website of the Week 6.01.06

Traditional (or should I say 'historical') photographic processes are being practiced lass and less as digital technology takes over. It will be a long, long time (famous last words) before digital processes can replicate many (if only a few) of the historical film and print processes, such as gum bichromate, platinum/palladium, etc. and the first process, the daguerreotype. This week's website of the week is actually two sites dedicated to historical photographic processes.

The first site is Contemporary Daguerreotypes - newdags.com which is about contemporary daguerreotypes, or artists in the present day using this process. The site has a large gallery of daguerreotypes, information about the history and how they are made. A local photographer here in Idaho also created some "dags" and prints (well, 'print' is a relative term since dags are made on copper plates rather than paper) and to see them in person is a different experience than what you see on your monitor. A properly executed daguerreotype has a dimensionality and a luminance nearly impossible to describe. If you can visit an exhibit of daguerreotypes, I encourage you to do so.

Hand
Jerry Spagnoli

The second site is Alternative Photography - alternativephotography.com operated by Malin Fabbri out of Sweden. This site is dedicated to artists and photographers working with alternative photography and processes. The site includes galleries, technical information, articles and more and a wide variety of known and relatively unknown ways to make photographic images. You can easily browse and search by artist, region, and process, look up how-to's for albumen prints, bromoils, copper photogravure, kallitypes, salt prints, ziatypes, and more. Lots of inspiration, engage in discussions with the artists on the forum, look up and purchase books about these processes, or just browse lots of really great art.

I have a small gallery on this site of my Polaroid SX-70 manipulations.