TIME MACHINE PHOTOGRAPHY

No other photographic process better captures the essence of truth and beauty as does the wet plate collodion process. This is because the capture of an image upon a plate of glass or tin is made directly from the reflected light of the subject itself. There are no intermediary steps, pixels, or interventions that can alter, modify, or change that which is photographed. The image is a truthful representation of what is seen. It cannot be duplicated or repeated. It exists wholly unto itself as the one and only.

In order to understand why these attributes are important and why this process is experiencing a resurgence, it is necessary to briefly examine the conflicting opinions of truth and beauty and how they affect our perception of reality.

The classical notion of beauty, one widely accepted since antiquity, was that beauty draws humanity towards a higher sense of well-being. Even as late as the 1850's, it was generally understood that beauty could be objectively quantified and that it was an antidote to that which is ugly and unpleasant.

This notion of beauty can be traced back to Aristotle and his understanding of of nature; where he postulated that within reality there exists objective truths that are knowable and discernible, beauty being among them. This belief later helped inspire the great art of the Renaissance period as well as the scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment.

Today, post-modernists challenge the Enlightenment assessment of beauty and propose instead that beauty is a social construct subject to the personal interpretations of one's own bias. Within this context beauty is no longer seen as truthful or objective.

According to Brian Duignan of the Encyclopedia Britannica, post-modernism is a deliberate repudiation of certain 18th-century Enlightenment values. A post-modernist will therefore claim that no objective truths exist, and that logic and reason are mere conceptual constructs that are not universally valid. Therefore, beauty lies only in the eye of the beholder.

Today, we see this division taking place within our own society, where a cultural battle rages between the conservatives (traditionalists) who want to preserve the heritage of the Enlightenment and the progressives (post-modernists), who want to replace it with their new imagined utopian future. The spark for this pronounced change can be attributed mostly to the German philosopher Emmanuel Kant, of whom philosopher Stephen Hicks wrote:

'Kant was the decisive break with the Enlightenment and the first major step toward postmodernism. Contrary to the Enlightenment account of reason, Kant held that the mind is not a response mechanism but a constitutive mechanism. He held that the mind-and not reality-sets the terms for knowledge. And he held that reality conforms to reason, not visa versa. In the history of philosophy, Kant marks a fundamental shift from objectivity as the standard to subjectivity as the standard'.

We can witness this disturbing change of attitude by observing the social discourse now taking place in our society, from museums that display shocking and ugly art to the classrooms where education is not meant to inform but rather to indoctrinate. Today we find ourselves in a spiritually empty wasteland devoid of any meaning to uplift and celebrate the human spirit.

Philosopher Sir Roger Scotum succinctly put it this way: 'The desecration of all things noble and virtuous have led us to sacrifice beauty for ugliness and truthfulness for deceit.'

In its rebuke to Kant and postmodernism, and yet perhaps the most endearing and meaningful aspect of the wet plate collodion process, is how it allows the photographer to embrace the values and wisdom of the Enlightenment. Beginning with his choice of chemicals; their formulation, mixture, and condition, and ending only after the plate has been thoroughly fixed, washed, and dried, do the lessons learned from science and reason, manifest themselves in a plate worthy of distinction. Because it is here, captured among the particles of silver, that the objective truths of reality become meaningful once again. Or simply put, a wet plate collodion photograph is truly a photograph like no other.