Jacqueline Roberts

"Going Dark: Leaving Lightroom for the Darkroom "

In the digital era choosing to go back to the darkroom might not seem  like a rational move, and for me it wasn't, this time it was personal. I photograph like we used to back in 1850, with an old bellow camera looking at the world upside down through a ground glass. I use silver and glass to make my images and egg white to make my prints. Wet plate collodion is a hands on process, messy but methodical. I will walk you through the process and craft and discuss the reasons that led me to swap flash cards for glass plates.

More specifically I will tell you how for me making wet plates went beyond the process and how I found that to go further in my work, I needed to slow down. To take pictures, I realised that first I had to take the time. I wanted the photograph to regain its value and purpose. Treasures that we would save from a house on fire. As we are swamped with selfies and snapshots, I feel that we are losing the emotional connection with photographs. They have become ubiquitous and meaningless. Engaging with the sitter and capturing emotions is essential to how I approach photography. Let's put our heart and soul for this alchemy to work.