"It's not uncomplicated, and it's sort of a cranky
process. It doesn't allow for much sloppy technique."
"...Collodion was used in surgery during the Civil
War to bind wounds, and I thought "Oh, how fitting
that I should be taking this process to the deep South.""
Could you take us through some
of the steps of your photographic process, especially the
collodion process?
MANN:
I learned this process from Mark
and France Osterman who are masters. They showed me how to
do it correctly, but it's just that I never am quite able
to. I'm sure they'll be dismayed if they ever see this film.
I went to their house and they walked me through all the steps,
and it's complicated. For starters, It's hard to get these
chemicals. Collodion, ether...they're all controlled...of
course grain alcohol you can get, but you can't get it in
Virginia. And the camera—you have to have a separate
piece for the camera made to put the plate in. But once I
made up my mind to do it, of course I pursued it with comical
tenacity and got all this stuff pulled together and learned
how to do it. It's not uncomplicated, and it's sort of a cranky
process. It doesn't allow for much sloppy technique.
For instance, the glass has to be absolutely perfect glass,
can't be just glass you buy at the hardware store. Oh no,
it has to be framing glass, it has to be perfectly clear glass,
and you have to wash it very carefully. You're not supposed
to wash it with this (Windex). You're supposed to wash it
with a special glass wax, and all the chemicals have to be
fresh and the water distilled and so forth. Anyway, to coat
the plate: Let's just say this is the glass. You have to pour
the collodion coating, which is collodion and ether mixed
together, in one very quick motion. It has to cover evenly,
and you have to get it off as fast as you can, otherwise you
have streaks. Then you take the plate to the silver nitrate,
and for reasons that escape me completely, the silver nitrate
sticks to the collodion and ether, and coats it, and at that
point, it's light sensitive. It takes about five minutes,
then you put it in the special back for the camera and carry
it dripping to the camera, and you have, at that point, no
more than two or three minutes to get the picture before it
dries. It dries quickly because the ether and the collodion
evaporate. The developer is a mixture of grain alcohol and
ferrous sulfate and the developing is just a repeat of the
coating. You basically pour it over the plate. And then you
fix it in plain sodium thiosulphate. You can also fix it in,
oddly enough, cyanide, but there have been wet plate related
deaths, due to people drinking their cyanide instead of their
grain alcohol.
One of the appropriate metaphoric
things in this whole process is that I found out from a doctor
that collodion was used in surgery during the Civil War to
bind wounds, and I thought "Oh, how fitting that I should
be taking this process to the deep South."
ART:21:
What triggered the desire to
use glass plate negatives?
MANN:
I guess because I was so immersed
in that whole glass plate, 19th Century aesthetic,
it was natural to want to learn how to do this. Back in the
early '70s, when we came back from Europe, Larry and I were
poking around up in the attic of this five story building
on the W&L campus and we found this collection of glass
negatives that had been taken around Lexington right after
the Civil War by a local photographer. In fact, he photographed
at the cabin right here on the farm. It was an amazing moment
when I held up a glass plate and damn, it was a picture of
the same cliffs that I've looked at my whole life, exactly
as they are now, even the little vines hanging down. Those
same vines are still there, and these ancient arborvitae trees
which obviously had fallen over 100 years ago—there they
were in the glass plate.
It was a moving thing to see these images and be able to retrace
his steps to a certain extent. He photographed the landscape
around here beautifully, and of course it's the aesthetic
I'm most partial to. I love those J.B. Greene pictures and
Gustav LeGray and Atget. I'm surprised it took me this long
to get to this process,
because I've always admired that aesthetic and find it redolent
with past. I just need to inject a little of the present in
it. Obviously I don't want to take the same pictures he took.
ART:21:
How much time did it take you
to master the technique?
MANN:
I never mastered it.
ART:21:
How much practice then?
MANN:
You know, I'm just anal enough—you
wouldn't know it to look at my Hogarthian clutter around here—but
I'm just anal enough to find this process satisfying. I can
concentrate with gimlet intensity for short periods of time
and pouring the plate is about right for me. I can get the
plate coated which is the important part. And that's the part
that you just can't mess up. And the rest of it didn't take
long at all. It's just like making every other photograph
really, if you think about it.
ART:21:
Could you talk about the equipment
you use and why?
MANN:
Well, you know I told you that
none of my equipment has ever been any good, I certainly could
go out and buy a good, tack-sharp lens that would take the
perfect picture that's in focus from end to end. But instead,
I spend an awful lot of time at that antique mall looking
around for these lenses with just the right amount of decrepitude.
The glue has to be peeling off of the lens elements, it’s
great if its mildewed and out of whack—a lens is made
up of several different pieces of glass which are supposed
to stay glued in the right relationship with each other—but
my most prized lens has one of the pieces of glass askew,
so when the light comes in it it's refulgent. It just bounces
all around and does this great sort of luminescent thing on
the glass. You can tell a good ruined lens right from the
get-go....they are the ones you find in the trash cans of
old photo studios, in some ghost town in Iowa. I mean, that's
the kind of lens I'm looking for.
