Course Descripton:

In this course, participants will learn to make photographs by direct contact printing in Platinum/Palladium using a coherent, unified approach from selecting a subject to making the final print. This introductory workshop will give an overview of the process beginning with the visualization of pictures for the platinum process, exposure and development to create a suitable negative and the procedures for hand coating, exposing and processing platinum prints. Participants will follow the entire process from subject selection to creation of their own final prints. Students will finish the weekend with a basic understanding and experience of the process, ready to improve their skills through practice on their own or in later workshops.

Instructor Biography:

Carl Weese was born in 1949 and grew up in New Jersey. From 1972 to the present, Weese has worked as a freelance photo-illustrator for editorial and corporate clients. His personal photographs have been widely exhibited in group and one-person shows and he is represented by galleries in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Washington and Virginia. He is co-author of the 1998 book The New Platinum Print, an instruction manual on modern approaches to the classic platinum/palladium photographic printing process.

This is a 4 hour shooting night for the wet plate community to interact with other wet plate photographers. This shooting night will be for shooting and troubleshooting the wet plate process. We provide the cameras, chemicals, tin, glass, and studio, and you provide the inspiration. This shooting night is for wet plate practitioners who have taken a wet plate workshop and would like more practice.  Still life and portrait set ups are possible.  There will be no instruction, but a wet plate practitioner is available for questioning and assistance.  There will be four cameras, which will be shared, and each participant is allowed to invite only one model for portrait sitting.  Note: maximum size is 5×7.

Limited to 8 participants.

Jerry Vezzuso has lived and worked in New York City as a photographer, master printer and professor for more than a half century.  His work is represented in many institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museum of the City of New York.  Jerry has exhibited and published widely including Double-Take magazine and he has produced a book entitled New American Haircuts by Ballentine Books.  As a master color printer his clients included: Gregory Crewdson, Philip Lorca di Corcia, Roni Horn, Tina Barney and Nan Goldin.  He was the recipient of the 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Special Projects Grant.

Currently, Jerry is on the Faculty of the School of Visual Arts, and the International Center of Photography.  He is a member of the Tierney Fellowship Committee and is a co-founder of the Program.  Presently he is working in video art.

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Course description coming soon!

This two day hands-on workshop is an introduction to the wet plate process. Immediate, hand-made and practiced in the 19th century by photographers such as Timothy O’Sullivan, Edward Muybridge and Julia Margaret Cameron, this class contextualizes the process in today’s changing photographic climate. Students will learn the basics of how to pour collodion to make positives (ambrotypes and tintypes) and glass negatives. Working in small groups with reproduction cameras and vintage brass lenses, they will be guided step by step in how to make these unique and instantaneous photographs. All materials are supplied. Limited to 8 participants.
Instructor Biography:
Joni Sternbach uses early photographic processes to create contemporary landscapes and seascapes. Her photography has taken her to some of the most remote deserts in the American West to some of the most prized surf beaches around the world. Sternbach is an artist and educator and has taught for many years at various institutions.
Her series, SurfLand, captures portraits of surfers in tintype, and was shown at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, in 2009 and will travel to the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida in 2013. Her monograph, SurfLand, was published in May 2009 by photolucida. Sternbach’s work is part of many public collections including the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston . She is the recipient of several grants including NYFA and CAPS and recently traveled to Byron Bay Australia as an artist in residence with Artpark. Sternbach is represented by Joseph Bellows in La Jolla, CA, and Edward Cella Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, CA.

www.jonisternbach.com

Choosing the right lens for a project is one of the most important decisions a photographer can make. This class will discuss how to determine the appropriate focal length and coverage for format and perspective. Lenses covered will be from hand ground 19th century to modern day computer designed objectives. Some of the 19th century lenses presented will be the Chevalier Verre Combine, Petzval portrait, Meniscus Landscape, Harrison Globe, and the Rapid Rectilinear. From the 20th century, soft focus lenses presented will be the Wollensak Verito, Pinkham and Smith Series, Struss Pictorial, Graf Variable, and the Nicola Perscheid as well as the modern, sharp focus Schneider Symmar-S, Super Angulon, and Tele-Xenars. Lenses will available for examination as well as sample images taken with these lenses. Students are welcome to bring in their own lenses for discussion.

Instructor Biography:
Geoffrey Berliner is the Executive Director of the Penumbra Foundation. He has been taking pictures and collecting antique photographic images and equipment for over 20 years. Eric Taubman is the founder of the Center for Alternative Photography in NYC and teaches workshops in wet plate collodion and lens history and design. Eric has owned and operated a group of photo labs and imaging companies in NY, LA, Miami, and London. He is an artist/photographer working in large format and alternative processes.

Course Description:

This is a 4-hour opportunity to produce cyanotypes and meet others working with this printing process. The cyanotype play night will be for producing cyanotypes and learning more about this process. We provide the chemicals, paper, UV light source, and studio – you provide negatives and inspiration. This cyanotype play night is for cyanotype practitioners who have already taken a cyanotype workshop and would like more practice. There will be no instruction, but a cyanotype practitioner is available for questioning and assistance. You will need to bring your own medium to large-format negatives (digital negatives are fine) or objects with which you would like to make a “cyanogram.”

Prerequisites:

Students MUST have a working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop. All students are required to bring a laptop with Adobe Photoshop installed.

Course Description:

Creating negatives in a digital darkroom has revolutionized the alternative photographic process world where instant edibility and correction can be done in minutes to achieve the perfect negative. During this introduction to digital negatives we will go over how to set up the digital darkroom, scanners, printers, input mediums, software and output media. Determining densities will be covered extensively and used with a singular process that can be applied to many. It is highly advantageous for students to have a working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop. Some basics will be covered but many techniques require the student to be comfortable with the software. Students are to bring a laptop with Adobe photoshop installed, RAW color corrected digital files, and scanned Tiff files. At the end of this two day workshop you will leave with saved curves and prints that can be applied and adjusted for working with silver gelatin prints. This technique can be applied to Gum Bichromate, Kallitype, Cyanotype, Platinum, Palladium, VanDyke, Gravure and many other processes.

Instructor Biography:

Morgan Post is a lover of all things alt pro. He has been a large format wet plate photographer and educator for the past five years. Post holds a MFA degree from Utah State University, a BFA degree from the School Of Visual Arts, and an Associates Degree from Maine Media Workshops. Morgan has worked extensively as a photographer and digital artist in both Los Angeles and New York. He has produced and managed wet lab workshops at Maine Media workshops and has a cooperative partnership with Artcraft Chemicals making alternative process kits. Morgan loves to expand traditional conventions of the photographic mediums. His current glass plate work uses the means and conventions of 19th Century technology to create a contrast and tension which highlights the social ethos of the rapidly evolving 21st. His work has appeared in several juried exhibitions, online exhibitions and numerous print publications.

This workshop is an investigation into the expressive possibilities of the Cyanotype. This process involves an iron-based chemical formula that creates a light sensitive emulsion. This emulsion is then painted onto art paper and exposed by placing a negative on the emulsion and making a contact print with a UV light source. This workshop will cover and demonstrate the techniques and procedures for making these aptly named blue-toned prints. Different chemistry formulas, emulsions, coating methods and paper choices will be discussed. Students should be prepared to bring in several of their own images in negative form. Medium and large format B&W negatives, paper and acetate negatives and digital negatives are all appropriate for this workshop.

Limited to 8 participants.

Instructor Biography:
Robert A. Schaefer, Jr. began his photography career while studying and getting his MA Degree (Diplom Ingenieur) at the Technische Universität of Munich, Germany. With exhibitions in Munich, Frankfurt, Hannover, Hamburg, Paris and Graz, he moved to New York in 1981 where he began working with alternative printing processes from the 19th Century. His particular favorite became the cyanotype which was used to print the images for his exhibitions “Blue Berlin,” Berlin, Germany in 1997, “Nothin But The Blues” at the Barbara Levy Gallery, New York City in 1999 and his 25-Year Retrospective at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama (his home state) in 1999 to 2000. Lyle Rexer writes about Schaefer’s use of cyanotype printing of architectural images in Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-garde (published by Abrams in 2002). The Goethe Institute of Delhi supported an exhibition of Schaefer’s cyanotypes in November 2010 at their facility and another at the Government Museum in Chandigarh with a catalogue, which offers images of both exhibitions. The Goethe Institute flew Schaefer there to speak at both openings as well as offer a cyanotype workshop at their individual institutes. Schaefer currently teaches various photography courses at New York University, and his work is handled by the Domeischel Gallery in New York City.

www.schaeferphoto.com

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The exquisite 1860′s albumen process will be investigated and introduced in this workshop. Paper will be coated with egg albumen then sensitized with silver nitrate. We will cover emulsion preparation and recipes, coating, sensitizing, and gold toning. Paper selection, sink preparation, and a discussion of appropriate negative density will be included. Limited to 8 participants.

Instructor Biography:
Brenton Hamilton holds his MFA in photography from the Savannah College of Art & Design. He is the Certificate Program Director of photography at Maine Media College and for 18 years has lead summer workshops in Maine. Brenton’s own work is inspired by the 19th century and has become a principle area of research and inspiration both as a historian and a printmaker. Devoted to the cyanotype & gum bichromate, Brenton’s embellished images are exhibited nationally: East Coast; at Susan Maasch Fine Art in Portland, Maine and West Coast; at TILT Gallery in Phoenix, AZ.

www.brentonhamiltonstudio.net

Philip Levine was born in 1928 in Detroit of Russian-Jewish immigrants, educated at the public schools & the city university of Detroit, Wayne U.  Studied poetry & poetry writing with Robert Lowell, John Berryman, & Yvor Winters.  In 1958 settled in Fresno & taught at Fresno State for 22 years.  In the mid-Sixties lived two years in Spain.  In October of 2009 published his 17th collection, NEWS OF THE WORLD.  His work has won many awards including two National Book Awards,  the National Book Critics Award,  & the Pulitzer in ’95,  He now divides his time between Brooklyn & Fresno.  Presently serving as Poet Laureate of the USA.

Andrew Moore is best known for large color images of Cuba, Russia, Times Square, and most recently, Detroit.

His photographs are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the George Eastman House and the Library of Congress amongst many others.

His recent bestselling book Detroit Disassembled, including an essay by Poet Laureate Philip Levine, was published in the spring of 2010, and accompanied an exhibition of the same title at the Akron Museum of Art. The exhibit was recently displayed at the Queens Museum of Art and will be moving to the Grand Rapids Art Museum in the summer of 2012.

Photo Credit: Andrew Moore

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French paper-negative practitioners are often said to have improved upon Talbot’s original patented calotype procedure.  Here, we will use one of earliest and most influential of the French techniques, a paper-negative method pioneered by the husband-and-wife team of Amélie Saguez and Jacques-Michel Guillot in the mid-1840s, and later known as “the Roman Method.”  The Guillot-Saguez procedure, rather than Talbot’s or Blanquart-Evrard’s more celebrated accounts, actually served as the template for the two main negative processes that were to follow: the dry, waxed-paper negative and wet-collodion (or wet-plate).  Contemporary calotypists like Le Gray, Flachéron, and Humbert de Molard all borrowed from the Guillot-Saguez procedure.  Starting with uncoated paper, we will cover all of the steps employed: iodizing, sensitizing, exposure in the camera, development, and fixing–with special attention being given to flotation and the difference between bromide stabilization and fixing with hypo.

Limited to 8 participants

Instructor Biography

Alan Greene took up the calotype process in 1998 as a reaction to digital photography. This led to his writing a technical manual, Primitive Photography, published in 2001. In 2003-2004, his paper-negative photography was featured at the Palazzo Caffarelli and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, as part of their collaborative exhibit, Roma/Rome 1850. Since then, he has contributed to Etudes photographiques, the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, and the Vocabulaire technique de la photographie. He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since calotype paper negatives are often exposed in a dampened state, it becomes difficult to load them in modern film-holders and cameras without contamination.  Taking inspiration from Talbot’s early “mouse-trap” cameras and other calotype-era designs, we will use contemporary materials like foam-core and PVC tubing to build whole-plate format box-cameras equipped with simple lenses. Such cameras will be loaded with dampened sensitized paper without harm.  Subjects to be considered in the course of building our cameras and lenses will be determining image format relative to lens focal-length, determining the hyper-focal distance, composing without a ground-glass, and the visual effects of lens aberrations.

Limited to 8 participants

Instructor Biography

Alan Greene took up the calotype process in 1998 as a reaction to digital photography. This led to his writing a technical manual, Primitive Photography, published in 2001. In 2003-2004, his paper-negative photography was featured at the Palazzo Caffarelli and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, as part of their collaborative exhibit, Roma/Rome 1850. Since then, he has contributed to Etudes photographiques, the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, and the Vocabulaire technique de la photographie. He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This is a 4 hour shooting night for the wet plate community to interact with other wet plate photographers. This shooting night will be for shooting and troubleshooting the wet plate process. We provide the cameras, chemicals, tin, glass, and studio, and you provide the inspiration. This shooting night is for wet plate practitioners who have taken a wet plate workshop and would like more practice.  Still life and portrait set ups are possible.  There will be no instruction, but a wet plate practitioner is available for questioning and assistance.  There will be four cameras, which will be shared, and each participant is allowed to invite only one model for portrait sitting.  Note: maximum size is 5×7.

Limited to 8 participants.

“During the entire period of its history,” states Sandy King in The Book of Carbon and Carbro, “carbon was considered the aristocrat of printing processes.” This class is a thorough introduction to the delightfully versatile carbon printing process, developed in 1855. The carbon process allows the printer to print in a variety of colors, tones, and on many different surfaces. Students learn how to make carbon tissues from gelatin, glycerin, sugar, and watercolor pigment. The carbon tissue is sensitized and exposed under a U.V. light source, then transferred to a base. Unexposed areas are washed away in warm water to reveal the base, leaving a raised exposed image. The raised texture of the exposed image is a unique quality of the carbon print. Students should bring large format or digital negatives for contact printing. Limited to 8 participants. 

Instructor Biography:
Lisa Elmaleh is a large format photographer whose current work is an exploration of the landscape of the Everglades. As a native of South Florida, the Everglades were an essential part of her personal history. Using a portable darkroom in the trunk of her car, Elmaleh photographs using the nineteenth century wet collodion process. Elmaleh received the Silas Rhodes scholarship to attend the School of Visual Arts, and obtained a BFA with honors. She is a recipient of the Tierney Fellowship, the Everglades Artist Residency, the Camera Club of New York Darkroom Residency, and the Goldwell Artist Residency. She has been included in various group shows such as the 2008 New York Photofest (Powerhouse) and Landscape: Voyage (KMR Arts).

www.lisaelmaleh.com

Sze Tsung Leong (American and British, born Mexico City 1970) is an artist based in New York. His work includes the series Cities, a detailed depiction of urban formations throughout the globe, from medieval towns to recent constructions, that together form a picture of the world at this particular moment in time at the beginning of the twenty-first century; Horizons, an international collection of images of natural terrains and urban landscapes that considers the relationships between far and near, foreign and familiar; and History Images, which examines the erasure of history and the reshaping of society through the built environment.

Image Credit:
Sze Tsung Leong
Alameda, México D.F.
2009 From the series Cities Chromogenic Color Print
© Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

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Instructor Biography:
Michelle Bates has been photographing with Holgas for over 20 years, and teaches and lectures worldwide about toy cameras. Her book, “Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity” is in its second edition and widely acknowledged as the ultimate guide to the subject.

Instructor Website: http://michellebates.net/

Photo Credit: Michelle Bates

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Course Description:
The mercury-developed daguerreotype was the process that Daguerre, and the French government, gave to the world in August of 1839. Within the next two years, the process was dramatically refined. This class will introduce this refined technique, brought forward into the 21st Century. In comparison to the Becquerel process, this refined mercury-developed daguerreotype is fairly fast; Development is a few minutes rather than hours, and exposures are dramatically shortened. But the introduction of a bromine accelerator and mercury for development add significant laboratory requirements to ensure safety for the contemporary daguerreotypist. This workshop will build on the skills learned from the Becquerel workshop, and provide the experience of making mercury-process daguerreotypes. The goal is to have each participant leave the workshop with mercury-process daguerreotypes that they have made themselves, and the knowledge to safely undertake the process on their own, from an informed standpoint. The class will teach a blend of the best 19th Century techniques (as I know them) and bring in what the 20th and 21st Centuries offer in improved techniques, tools, and safety. We never stop learning. Note: It is highly recommended that participants in the Mercury-Process Workshop first attend a Becquerel workshop at CAP or elsewhere.

Instructor Biography:

Kenneth E. Nelson has been making daguerreotypes since 1976. He has actively written about, lectured on, demonstrated and taught the daguerreotype process since 1980, including 5 years of teaching with the Historic Process Workshops at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House. He holds BFA and MFA degrees in Photography and Photographic Museum Practices, and a Certificate in Photographic Conservation. His daguerreian work is widely published, and is included in public and private collections in France, the U.S., Canada, Japan and other countries. He and his wife Meg live near Seattle, Washington and together are in business as KaufmaNelson Vintage Photographs.

Course Description:
The daguerreotype is an image unlike any other; each is unique and elusive. It was one of the first and arguably most beautiful forms of photography, and yet its technologies are largely forgotten. In this workshop we will learn, practice, and discuss different methods of daguerreotypy with the goal that every participant be able to produce several images, and quickly be on their way to making daguerreotypes on their own. This workshop will use the less toxic Becquerel development, and will provide the necessary background for mercury development. We will concentrate on important and difficult skills: polishing, sensitizing, exposing, and problem solving. The course will also include a brief introduction to the history of 19th century photographic technology. All supplies and equipment will be provided by the Center.

Limited to 8 participants

Instructor Biography:
Jason Greenberg Motamedi is a daguerreotypist and anthropologist. He has a doctorate in cultural anthropology, and has taught at several universities and colleges. He lives in Portland, Oregon and works for a non-profit organization conducting educational research. His photography seeks to understand and adapt 19th century technologies to contemporary aesthetic, intellectual, and ideological concerns.

www.motamedi.info

Course Description:

Joy Goldkind was 50 years old before she took her first photography class, though her background was always based in the fine arts. Despite an unusually late start, Goldkinds career as a fine arts photographer has progressed rather rapidly. Her photographs of nude dancers, geishas, drag queens, ballerinas, circus performers, etc. have not gone unnoticed. Her subjects are soft in contrast yet strong in spirit. Sometimes inspired from a fantasy world. The use of double exposures and slow shutter speeds help Joy to change what is true and expected into a more surrealistic scene. The old world beauty and quality they possess is in no doubt influenced by a deep interest in art history. With the use of the historic Bromoil process as a tool to express her fine art portraits, Joy adds a layer of mystery to her photographs. The Bromoil process is a printing method that was very popular in the early 1900s. Bromoil was favored by pictorial photographers who used it to add a more artistic rendering to their work. The Bromoil process begins by bleaching a black and white silver gelatin print to remove the silver. Lithograph ink is then applied with a brush or roller to replace the silver in the print. Any color or combination of colors can be used. Each piece is individually inked by hand; therefore no two prints are identical.

Instructor Biography:

Joy Goldkind currently resides in St. James, NY. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC in 1963. She has exhibited in numerous locations across the country. She had a solo show at the Museo Nationale Della Fotographia in Italy, where a permanent collection of her work is now housed. In 2007 she won the cover contest of Eyemazing Magazine and in 2008 her photos where selected in the top 50 photographers at Photolucida. Her photography is also included in corporate collections in NYC, as well as in private collections across the globe. Goldkind’s photographs have graced the covers of international publications and magazines such as SilverShotz and Eyemazing. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times, B&W Magazine, Zoom Magazine, Photolife, View Camera and Color magazine.  Joy’s work won photographer of the year 2010 at the WPGA competition and will be showing work in Buenos Aries, Argentina in 2011.  She is represented by Verve Fine Arts. NM, Tilt Gallery, Phoenix AZ and Divergence Fine Art in Baltimore MD.

Joy Goldkind’s work

http://www.Galeriebmg.com/joy_goldkind_exhibition.html

Course Description:

Chemical safety and mixing techniques for 19th century photography in the 21st Century.

This class will go over practical safety measures when mixing, storing and trying not to inhale or ignite various chemicals.  We will answer question’s like: Can I mix this type of acid with this type of chemical?  Is it safe to store this in a hot darkroom?  How does humidity effect the longevity of this dry chemical?  Can I pour this down the drain?  This class will demonstrate how to mix Cyanotypes, Vandykes, Albumen, Salt Printing, Wet Plate Collodion, Kallitypes,  Platinum and Palladium and its many developers. Every student will be able to purchase a “kit” of their choice at a special discounted rate, and come away with a safety plan for their own darkroom.

When registering for this course, please send an e-mail to info@capworkshops.org listing which kit you would like to purchase.

Kits available for purchase will be:

This is a 4 hour shooting night for the wet plate community to interact with other wet plate photographers. This shooting night will be for shooting and troubleshooting the wet plate process. We provide the cameras, chemicals, tin, glass, and studio, and you provide the inspiration. This shooting night is for wet plate practitioners who have taken a wet plate workshop and would like more practice.  Still life and portrait set ups are possible.  There will be no instruction, but a wet plate practitioner is available for questioning and assistance.  There will be four cameras, which will be shared, and each participant is allowed to invite only one model for portrait sitting.  Note: maximum size is 5×7.

Limited to 8 participants.

Photographer Amy Arbus has published four books, including the award winning On the Street 1980-1990 and The Inconvenience of Being Born. The New Yorker called her most recent, The Fourth Wall, her masterpiece. Her advertising clients include Chiat/Day, Foote, Cone and Belding, American Express, Saatchi & Saatchi, SpotCo, New Line Cinema and Nickelodeon. Her photographs have appeared in over one hundred periodicals around the world, including New York Magazine, People, Dazed and Confused and The New York Times Magazine. She teaches portraiture at the International Center of Photography, Maine Media Workshops and The Fine Arts Work Center. Amy Arbus is represented by Anthropy Arts, The Amador Gallery in New York, The Schoolhouse Gallery in Massachusetts and The Clic Gallery in New York, St. Barth and East Hampton. She has had twenty-one solo exhibitions worldwide, and her photographs are a part of the collection of The New York Public Library and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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If canceled, the participant will be refunded in full for the individual workshop.

Please contact us to register in the program at info@capworkshops.org and be sure to include a list of all 8 workshops you are interested in.

If you have any questions please contact us by email or by phone 917-288-0343.

Whether you’re just learning how to shoot a camera or have been toting around your Hassleblad for years, the simplicity of a pinhole camera never ceases to reveal image-making’s exquisite nuances and complexities.

The pinhole is made without a lens and with a single small aperture — effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. The human eye in bright light acts similarly, as do cameras using small apertures.

You can buy one or build your own. Withoutlenses.com has a comprehensive tutorial on how to create one.

Not into film? Nancy Spencer and Eric Renner’s famous pinholeresource.com has information on making a digital pinhole camera. This week Nancy Spencer and Eric Renner hold their 2010 Pinhole, Zone Plate, Camera Obscura Workshop at Cabrillo Arts in Santa Cruz, CA.

The Center for Alternative Photography (CAP) in New York City is a workshop-based educational organization devoted to the teaching original 19th century photographic processes, such as Daguerreotype, Collotype, Collodion, and Cyanotype,  and 20th century emulsion-based photography.

Our mission is to broaden the palette of artistic and visual communication tools available to photographers, artists, and visual communicators. For CAP’s workshop schedule and more information: www.capworkshops.org

Submissions and questions regarding the Journal can be directed to editor Alison Nguyen: alison.c.nguyen@gmail.com.