Who is Eric Retterbush?
Eric Retterbush is a beauty hunter. He loves creating and exploring with the visual arts in many mediums and most recently began creating tintypes using the wet plate collodion process. Since beginning this intriguing adventure, Eric has learned how to understand light, chemistry and the subjects he photographs. Every aspect of the process brings enlightenment and joy to Eric and he is often found tinkering with the technical aspects of the art form and begging people to sit for just one more frame. He currently resides in the high desert of Flagstaff, Arizona.
What is a Tintype?
Tintypes are silver images on aluminum plates created using the wet plate collodion process invented by Fredrick Scott Archer in 1851. This process is one of the earliest forms of photography and was the main practice for portrait photography through the civil war era. Due to advancements in photography technology, tintypes essentially died out by the 20th century. Today, the wet plate collodion art form is alive once again due to a hand full of artists and historians.
Unlike most modern digital photography, the wet plate collodion process is an arduous practice. It combines the techniques of methodical chemistry processes with light and composition. This age-old trade of creating a one-of-a-kind photographic art piece is part craft, part ritual and sometimes, part dumb luck.
With care, each tintype photo will last hundreds of years without fading which is unique to most other forms of photography. Additionally, the clarity of a tintype image is extraordinary with resolution down to a molecular level. This unparalleled visual precision is as crisp as a mirror reflection making for an honest and intimate portrayal of every subject.
Rumblings of my Portrait Journey.
In 2007, I visited a remote village in Tibet where I was provided an opportunity to take photos of cleft lip patients in order to document their healing progress and report the findings back to a hospital in Kunming. On the long journey from the village back to the city, I began to think about the barren landscape and the barren walls in the homes of those I had just photographed and then came a spark of an idea.
Once back in the city, I made a second copy of each photo and then promptly began the 11-hour bus ride and 2-hour hike ascending a grassy terraced hill to return once more to the same small village. I delivered my portraits to those I had photographed days prior and each gift was greeted with surprise and elation, as many of the individuals had never had physical photos of themselves before.
One year later, while traveling through Guatemala, still captivated by the idea of portraits for people without them, I decided to visit a small village named Santa Catarina on the shores of Lago de Atitlan. I took portraits of several families I had met years prior and gifted these prints the following day. Their reaction was a similar excitement I had seen in Tibet and I knew I was on to something.
I hate taking pictures of people but I love taking portraits of people. A portrait is sincere; it is with permission and it is an intimate experience for both the sitter and photographer.
As I continue my passion of documenting cultures, civilizations and events in time through those that lived through them, the wet plate collodion process is the perfect medium for me. I am able to embrace the imperfections of the human hand and the truthful permanence of the final image. I am able to create reflections of the beauty found within our human race and I love doing it.