Today we’d like to introduce you to Shane Balkowitsch
Hi Shane, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I saw a wet plate online and I was simply drawn to it. Which is rather odd as a non-photographer. I asked the photographer details about the image and he explained to me it was a wet plate collodion photograph. At that moment I knew that I wanted to try to make one of these historic images.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
As a non-photographer I had to learn by trial and error. I had no mentor, other than the “Doer’s Guide” by John Coffer. The manual that I painstakingly studied. I did not own a camera, and I found myself setting up a darkroom. The problem was, I had never been in a darkroom before. The terminology and the techniques of photography were completely foreign to me and I have never taken a class in photography or read a book on the subject up to that point. In fact, I had no interest in photography whatsoever.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Nostalgic Glass Wet Plate Studio?
I built the first natural light wet plate studio in the country in well over 100 years. I knew from historic books and schematics what was done 150 years ago, and I wanted to recreate a creative space in present day. I have people come in from all over the world to have their portrait taken in my studio. I also have students from all grade levels out to the studio to experience and see the process in person. There are less than 1000 wet plate artists in the world, and I am proud to continue to promote this historic process. The images that I make are of silver on glass and they will last for thousands of years unbroken. I am an ambrotypist which means “eternal impression” and all I shoot on is black glass.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
We know there was just a small handful of wet plate photographers in the 1980’s and now there are over 1000 of us in the world. This is still a very small number when you take into account 8 billion people. All I can do is to continue to show that the process is still viable and, in my opinion, the most beautiful photographic process ever invented.
Pricing:
- $500 for an 8×10 portrait of silver on black glass
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nostalgicglasswetplatestudio.com
- Instagram: balkowitsch
- Facebook: balkowitsch
- Twitter: balkowitsch
- Youtube: balkowitsch
Image Credits
The portrait of me is by Kelli Swenson and was taken at the burnt down studio of Frank Fiske in Fort Yates, North Dakota. He was a frontier photographer that photographed many Native Americans from this area back in the early 1900’s. A Native American sitter told me they knew of the location of his studio, so I traveled there with the State Historical Society of North Dakota to document his creative space.