19th c. Technology 21st c. Subject Matter: Artisanal Photographer Eric Robinson to shoot SF Leather

Eric Robinson takes the techniques of photography back to its roots. He works in wet plate collodion processes, producing one of a kind plates on glass. Using a traditional view camera, he cuts an anachronistic figure while exposing the plates. No shutter, he lifts a sliding door on the camera to expose the plate and counts. One, two, three…twenty-nine, thirty seconds or more. A portraitist, his subjects experience a taste of the early sitter’s experience. It is important to stay still. The help of devices may be sought. Portraiture at its best is a collaborative process, an agreement between the photographer and the model. What began in the midwest as a series of portraits by a graduate student of his professor and his partner has become the focus of a cross-country road-trip to document a lifestyle, a subculture, and the extended family of a friend and rogue scholar. On the road somewhere in Nevada as of this posting, Eric should be arriving in San Francisco sometime late Friday, in time for many of the festivities associated with the Dore (Up Your) Alley street fair. Read more about Eric at the HomoGenii site. The photos in the slide show below were taken during a shoot in April, 2010 in Carbondale, Illinois, where the photographer is taking an MFA in Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University. His undergraduate degree is in Chemistry.

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