via guest contributor, Megan Charland

I recently checked out the exhibition Silver and Water here at George Eastman House. Wow! Have you been in to see it yet? The moment I stepped into the gallery and saw the print on the floor submerged in water I was already planning my next visit. It’s wild to think that when I return next month I will be looking at an entirely different image as the print degrades.

Once I tore myself away from the image on the floor I walked around the gallery admiring the gelatin silver prints on the wall. It was surprising to me, to see these photos framed and lit so perfectly. You see, I have seen prints like these before — I helped make one.

A couple of years ago Metabolic Studio drove the Liminal Camera to Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) and offered their MFA students, myself included, the opportunity to ride around in the camera and make a photograph.

I remember the moment I spun around in the light-tight darkroom door and entered the back of the camera (a shipping container) I instantly smelled the fixer and flashbacked to high school photography. The walls within the camera were lined with the tools of the trade. Light safe headlights, plastic tongs, timers, rubber gloves… it was all there.

Metabolic Studio picked us up from VSW and we drove to the former First National Bank of Rochester. [WATCH] The ride to the bank was personally my favorite part. It was such a surreal experience to watch the world in front of me pass me by upside down. I also lost all sense of time inside the camera. It was funny, the Liminal Camera had to make a few maneuvering attempts to exit the VSW parking lot. The entire time they were backing up and turning around, I could have sworn we must have driven miles already, but really we hadn’t even left the parking lot yet!

Once we parked at our destination we then prepped to take a photograph. As a class, we worked together to first make a test-strip, then a negative, and then the final print. The final print is now part of the permanent collections at VSW.

If you haven’t been in to see Silver and Water yet I highly recommend it. If you’ve already been, go back and let me know how that print in the water is doing!

-Megan Charland
@megancharland
artist, blogger, curator

We’ve been preparing for this workshop for two months now. My research assistants Chris Holmquist and Nick Brandreth and I just finished our first public workshop in making, coating, shooting and processing gelatin emulsions. Ron Mowrey, ex Kodak emulsion engineer, was also there to answer any theoretical questions.

I designed the formula back in 2004 as a basic 1880 type emulsion used for gelatin dry plates negatives. It’s very much like what George Eastman’s chemists would have made.

We had seven attendees during the four day workshop and we’ll have six more come to the second session. The first day included an illustrated lecture on the history and chemistry and then we demonstrated how to make an emulsion in daylight to give everyone a chance to photograph each step. After that we divided into two groups and they each made batches of silver bromide gelatin emulsion.

On the second day we coated 4×5” test plates, exposed them in the George Eastman House gardens and processed them in the darkrooms. The next morning we evaluated the negatives, looked at amazing original prints in the photograph collection and rare emulsion making equipment in the technology collection. We ended the day by coating more plates.

The third day we spent most of the time shooting and processing plates. In the late afternoon we coated plates for shooting the following morning. On the final day we shot and processed in the morning and at lunch evaluated the plates and Nick scanned them for reference. We went out and shot a group portrait …on our emulsion. Chris ended the workshop with a demonstration of coating the emulsion on paper and film.

This wasn’t the first time gelatin emulsion making has been offered to the public, but given the scope of what the group learned, what they saw and what they produced, it was a landmark workshop. We hope that the interest in emulsion making and shooting will grow like it did after we taught the first public workshops in collodion here at the museum back in the 90s.

More information about our photo process workshops here

If you’re an instagrammer in Rochester we’re hosting the next meetup this weekend. Our curator of photographs, Jessica Johnston will give the group a gallery tour of our current exhibit Silver and Water. RSVP to @rocinstagram and come hang out!

March 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the Kodak Instamatic family of cameras. These cameras, featuring the instant-loading 126 (Kodapack) film cartridge, were by far the most successful of the time. Instamatics, like the Brownies they replaced, were the entrée cameras for a new generation of photographers.

Some of the accolades associated with this iconic 1960s-era camera are:

• The Instamatic provided the amateur photographer an inexpensive, well-made, and easy-to-use camera

• The Instamatic was the most successful Eastman Kodak Company camera since the introduction of the Brownie camera of 1900

• More than 50 million Instamatic cameras were sold worldwide between 1963 and 1970, with 7.5 million sold within the first two years of production

• It was introduced at a time when camera innovation was dominated by German and Japanese companies, proving American engineering could still produce competitive products

• The Instamatic 100 was designed by Frank A. Zagara, who won a Certificate of Design Merit from the Industrial Designers Institute

• The cartridge-loading system was a bombshell success, copied by numerous camera and film manufacturers around the world

• The 126 cartridge was designed by Kodak engineer Hubert Nerwin, with patent number 3,138,081 granted June 23, 1964

• The name Instamatic name became synonymous with snapshot photography, similar to the Kodak name during George Eastman’s time

Silver and Water opens this weekend at the museum. The exhibit contains 19 large format black and white gelatin silver prints and a 16mm video. One of the pieces in the gallery that immediately caught my attention is an image submerged in a large pond of water in the middle of the space. Over time the image will begin to disintegrate – as the emulsion softens the silver will lift up to create a new kind of negative, right in front of our eyes.

Silver and Water is an installation by Los Angeles artist Lauren Bon and her Metabolic Studio Optics Division.  The prints were created by the Liminal Camera, a life size pinhole camera –find out more.