Page 10 - Capture magazine Aug-Sep-Oct 21

PEOPLE
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WHAT THE JUDGES THOUGHT
There is an authenticity to this portrait that transcends the paper that it is printed on. I feel her personality, her calm inner strength looking right back at me encouraging me to slow down and take a deep breath. The inherent characteristics produced by the early wet plate collodion look and technique are a perfect match to the expression and mood conveyed by the sitter. Its strength lies in its simplicity. – Jackie Ranken
This portrait packs a punch. You are immediately drawn to the subject’s direct eye contact as she looks at the lens, but isn’t entirely focussed on it. She’s somewhere else. As you delve further into the image, you notice the beautifully handled fall away of focus, the texture and patterns in her three layers of clothing, the deliberate imperfections of dots and scratches in the background, and the burnt edges around the frame. The image feels nostalgic and melancholic, and leaves the viewer wanting to know more about the subject. It is expertly handled in black and white, and shows a high level of skill in its execution.
– Alex Cearns
WINNER
BRENCE COGHILL
Melbourne-based commercial and portrait photographer Brence Coghill is driven by moments of authenticity and connection. Conveying quiet, introspective, or unguarded moments, his images vary from striking character portraits through to exploring surreal or conceptual ideas.
Since 2018, he has been working in the large-format wet plate collodion process, an analogue alt-photography technique from the 1850s. He revels in the ‘controlled chaos’ of wet plate: the sense of alchemy from hands-on manipulation of chemistry and the challenge of trying to control a process that’s inherently wild and unpredictable.
Coghill has received numerous awards and commendations for his wet plate collodion work. In 2019 he won Silver and Bronze at the Tokyo International Foto Awards, Silver at Prix de la Photographie Paris, and an Honourable Mention at the International Photography Awards. In last year’s Australian Photography Awards, his wet plate images took out an unprecedented six placements in the Top 25 of the Analogue category.
www.brencecoghill.com
Wendy. My path crossed with Wendy, an apparel designer from Atlanta, through a shared interest in alternative process analogue photography. We had both travelled to a remote off-grid farm in upstate New York seeking mentorship from John Coffer, the man who resurrected the wet plate collodion process from the brink of obscurity in the early 1980s by piecing together the process from historic archives and 19th century photographers’ notebooks.
I shot Wendy’s portrait in the dying light at the end of the day on the farm, with only enough time to make a single exposure (in which she had to hold still for six seconds). Shot with a wooden sliding box camera (a large-format camera without bellows, in which nested boxes slide within each other to achieve focus) using the wet plate collodion process. A 6.5” x 8.5” aluminium plate is hand-coated in liquid chemistry, sensitized in silver nitrate, and loaded into the camera while still wet. After exposure the plate must be developed and rinsed immediately, which I did using John Coffer’s makeshift outdoor darkroom, with chickens scratching around nearby.
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[capture] aug_oct.20