ABSTRACT
The daguerreotype was one process where negative and positive were combined in the same photographic image, thereby offering a quite particular, even peculiar, perceptual experience. Archer even proposed peeling off the collodion negative and storing it for future development and use, allowing the glass plate to be used over and over again. In an ambrotype, then, the negative is once again repressed in order to make the positive possible, making it always present but absent nevertheless. Tintypes were cheap, at least compared to the daguerreotype process that they succeeded and, to a large degree, displaced. Interestingly, a number of contemporary artists have taken up collodion photography in recent years, making both tintypes and ambrotypes on modern substrates like acrylic or aluminium. In 2006, the American artist Walead Beshty exhibited a series of photographs he called Pictures Made by my Hand with the Assistance of Light..
