Master Platers: Collective Chemistry

MASTER PLATERS: COLLECTIVE CHEMISTRY

Modern Tintypes on view at The Gallery at CCBC Catonsville Oct. 17 – Nov. 22

The Gallery at CCBC Catonsville

Q Building

800 South Rolling Road

Baltimore MD 21228

Oct. 17 – Nov. 22, 2011

Reception with the artists – 6 p.m., Friday, Nov. 4

Free and open to the public.

Call 443-840-4246 for times and other information related to this exhibit.

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. -- The Master Platers, a collective of five photographers, will be showing contemporary photographs made using the wet-plate collodion process. The wet-plate collodion process, invented in 1851, was common during the Civil War era.  It is quite unusual now because it is a demanding process that requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed while wet.

According to their press release, “the five Master Platers (photographers  Melitte Buchman,  Kym Kulp,  Monty McCutchen, David Prifti and Steve Wilson) came together from vastly different parts of the country,  photographic traditions, aesthetics, education and work with different subject matter, but have nonetheless found common ground. Rather than recreating 19th Century-style photographs, they utilize the immense physical beauty of the process to interpret modern questions of place and identity.  Daily moments of grace, powerful portraits, modern story telling are all represented here. The group as a whole has been pursuing truth and beauty one image at a time.”

The Metal Platers have provided these brief biographies:

Melitte Buchman is a professional photographer who works in archives and libraries creating digital cabinets of curiosity. Although a longtime color worker, Buchman has been completely seduced by the beauty of this historic process. Her photographs include issues of place and objects of power.

Kym Kulp, an East coaster who is a now a Silicon Valley transplant, is a teacher and an artist using photography, multimedia and installation to speak to her central concern of family and gender issues.  Using the vernacular of the Victorian era, she creates beautiful images of women.

Monty McCutchen lives in Asheville NC and in his time has refereed basketball, has been a long-horn cattle rancher and seeks the blue highway over the interstate at every opportunity. He entered photography though alternative processes and works with only large-format cameras to render his vision. He creates moral tales through photography.

David Prifti has been an artist and teacher for more than 25 years, working with narrative portrait issues for the bulk of his career. Prifti has approached this subject in a variety of media. Recently he has been making collodion portraits of students and friends.

Steve Wilson is a professional photographer who works in non-silver and alternative processes.

High Resolution photos from this exhibit are available at www.flickr.com/ccbcmedia

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