The Ground Glass Project
A 100 year old camera and the desire to capture the essence of people .
Come have a seat….
How this all started…
I bought a large format Burke and James field 8x10 from a professor I had in college almost 20 years ago. I always loved making portraits with the camera and there is something about working with the large format that can’t be replicated, especially in today’s world of iPhones and snapshots. My professor always said, “A photographer doesn’t take pictures, we make photographs.” This has stuck with me, we don’t take, but we create. Fast forward to 2022 and I found myself wanting to work on a new project. Get back to the love of making photographs, making portraits. I was inspired by a fellow photographer who was using direct positive paper and made some beautiful portraits of his son’s and friends during the height of the pandemic. I spoke with him about the process decided this was not the right fit for what I was wanting to do. The expense, setting up a darkroom again, scanning and the slow process that is large format. I knew I wanted this to be a larger project and although this wasn’t the right route to take, the seed was planted.
I finally dug out the bulky camera just to feel it again and look at the ground glass. Everything is upside-down and backwards when working with a view camera and it takes a while to get your brain back to thinking that way, but odd how fast it comes back. The camera has a soul, the wooden frame, the brass gearing and large lens, something about this camera takes me back to the masters that inspired me years ago. Edward and Brett Weston, Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Sally Mann, Richard Avedon, these photographers MADE photographs. I setup the camera and a good friend and photographer Brian Verbarg came by the studio as I was setting it up. We got talking about it and I asked him to sit in for a test shot. At this point I was just shooting the ground glass just to see what it looked liked, never thinking this would become the project itself. I had him sit in and we took a few shots. Meh… it was ok, “Let’s add a light” he said, so we grabbed the octobox with a grid and placed it on the left. Another image. Better. We added in one other spot to help punch it up a bit and that was it. It had a good feel for what I was envisioning and little did I know at the time, but the project was born.
I looked at different options for trying to use the camera but ultimately I knew I wanted a digital solution while still using the camera. I did find they are making Polaroid 8x10 color and B&W again, but due to supply chain issues, it was out of stock, plus it was going to get pretty expensive. I also looked at mounting my Sony on the rear standard where the film would go, but that wasn’t going to give me the look I was looking for. Ultimately I went back to the original images I made of Brian. The look, the feel, the “grain” of the image that was created because of the ground glass and the scratches from years of use, all came together to create the image I was after. I have a 5x7 and 4x5 reducing back for the 8x10 camera and after some additional trial and error, and a few new pieces of ground glass from Ebay, I settled into the 5x7 format with the original glass and clipped corners. I don’t really have a good reason why, but it all came together. The creative process is weird sometimes.
The entire purpose of this project is to capture the essence of people. I’m not looking for someone to “smile for the camera”, but rather capture the nuances of people that make them the individual they are. A lot of the people here are family, friends or friends of friends that have been willing to sit in. People from different backgrounds, education, lifestyle, ages and beliefs all in the effort to capture the essence of who they are and what makes them unique. I also felt like a single image wasn’t enough to capture the personality of people. I have always loved the balance of triptychs and this seemed to work really well for this project. This is an ongoing project with the goal of getting to 100 portraits.
So come on down to the studio, take a breath, relax and have your portrait made. We won’t take your picture, we are going to make a photograph.
I look forward to seeing you.
Geoff
Click on each portrait to see the full triptych.
