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

Tags: eastman house, lauren bon, liminal camera, metabolic studio, visual studies workshop

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

March 2, 2013 Grand Reopening Night – Shared memories of the Dryden Theatre’s past, and excitement for all that is in store.

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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!

Tags: Film, photo, rocinstagram

With Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful taking the box-office lead upon opening last weekend, we have proof once again that the “Oz” legacy remains great and powerful.  From a story written in 1900, the words of author L. Frank Baum have leapt from the pages onto the stage, from small theaters to Broadway, and to the silver screen, including the MGM film of 1939 — which has been seen worldwide more than any other film ever made — and also the earliest surviving film version of the tale, dated 1910.

In the case of the two classic

film versions, they are preserved at George Eastman House, and have been for decades — the only original print of the 1910 version and the original camera negatives from the Judy Garland fave, The Wizard of Oz.

Going down the yellow brick rick in the 1939 MGM classic The Wizard of Oz© Warner Bros.

The 13-minute early screen version was influenced by a stage musical directed by Baum himself and features young Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tinman, Lion, Toto, and a glamorous good witch and a scary bad witch … plus random characters like a costumed cow and dancing girls. The early film’s influence on the Technicolor classic created three decades later are detectable, from scary-faced trees to the Scarecrow’s costuming and mannerisms.

The cultural significance of the “Oz” films is obvious, but the importance of the preservation may not be so obvious. The 1910 silent film is the only existing copy in the world and its proper archiving and inspection has allowed for it to be stable enough to be digitized and shared — 103 years later — and also for the original film to be around for generations to come.

Young Bebe Daniels as Dorothy meets the Scarecrow for the first time in the 1910 silent film The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

In the case of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, the camera negatives at Eastman House have been the original source material for every print, every video, every DVD, and every Blu-ray copy ever made. To make the 70th anniversary Blu-ray in 2009, Warner Bros Studio borrowed the 1939 negatives to create high-res scan, because the original film material is still the best source from which to garner the highest quality imaging and sound.

The studio did not use, mind you, the previous digital copy made a few years back, but the well-preserved YCM negatives (separate reels for yellow, cyane, and magenta, as these colors were layered to create the color-separations for the Technicolor classic).
These negatives were the actual film in the camera when the movie was shot, just feet away from Judy Garland, as she declared “There’s no place like home.” And Eastman House is proud to be the home for her on-screen persona for many, many years to come. Click, Click.

Tags: judy garland, l. frank baum, MGM, original negative, Oz the Great and Powerful, the wizard of o