FIELD//WORK: A Study of Finger Lakes Agriculture Through Wet Plate Collodion Photography

Opening reception for Crystal Calabrese's photo show at Hale & Hearty Farm in Brooktondale. Free, family friendly and open to the public, no registration required. Live music by the June Bugs. For the project, Calabrese restored a ~100 year-old banquet camera to create ultra large format tintypes and ambrotypes of local farmers and the land they work. Historically used to photograph large groups of people, the panoramic format of a banquet camera is well suited for landscape photography. FIELD//WORK portrays farm landscapes in a documentary, yet artistic style; the flowing lines and imperfections resulting from the wet plate collodion process ground the photographs in the handmade process of the art. Calabrese collaborated closely with her subjects to make the photographs, encouraging their active participation in the creation of the artwork. Working out of her enclosed-trailer-turned-darkroom, she created one image at a time from start to finish in the field, spending 2-4 hours at each farm. The wet plate process is slow and methodical. Calabrese mixes her own chemistry and prepares her plates ahead of time, then treks her gear out to the field, hauling water, chemistry, darkroom equipment, her enormous large format camera, tripod, and sand bags. Liquid emulsion is poured over the plates immediately before making each photograph. The pictures are developed, rinsed, and fixed before the emulsion dries, making warm summer temperatures especially a challenge. Farmers posed for 2-20 seconds for each portrait, depending on lighting conditions, time of day, and cloud cover. Calabrese believes that longer exposure times are key to the magic of wet plate photographs, affording the viewer more than just a fleeting glimpse into a subject's soul. FIELD//WORK was funded by the Rural and Traditional Arts Fellowship, administered by Shake on the Lake and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the Artist in Community Grant, made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant program from the New York State Council on the Arts, administered by the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.