Pictures embrace our past

PHOTOGRAPHIC artist Phillip England’s latest project is a step back in time.

England uses tintype photography, a chemically based form of photography first patented in 1856, to project images onto plates of tin inside the camera at his studio in Salamanca.

A former research scientist, he turned his focus to art five years ago, and has been working on the tintype technique for two years.

The process was cheap when it was introduced in the 19th century and, for the first time in history, working-class people could afford to have photos made of themselves.

“Tintype photography sort of democratised photography,” England said.

While technology had come a long way since then, he found himself drawn to the technique.

“I was feeling like the modern digital camera-based photography process was somehow too perfect and too computer-based, and it lacked handmade, tangible, concrete quality,” he said.

That’s not to say he has shunned all other methods.

“I haven’t abandoned other ways of taking photographs and I don’t dismiss those other ways, but this is a very exacting and intensive sort of process so this is what I concentrate on.”

England said there was a great deal of the artist projected in each image.

“It’s a unique image, so it’s a bit more like a painting than a photograph in that it’s a oneoff,” he said.

“It satisfied that urge to produce something that was more palpable and tangible and handmade.”

He produces portraits and landscape images both in the studio and outside in his travelling darkroom.

The portraits require subjects to sit still without moving for about 15 seconds.

“That lends the gaze an intensity that is not easy to find in modern photography,” Mr England said.