claire on glass

A hose came loose in my basement and sprayed for easily a week before I found it. In the line of fire sat boxes of Zebra dry plates, 4x5 and 5x7, that I'd stocked up on from Nejc in Slovenia. They came through dry, saved by blackout bags and good packaging, the unsung heroes of analog photography. Something something not all heroes and capes. But that wasn't the hard part.

Then Claire stopped by.

It was one of those overcast days that make the whole Midwest feel like a held breath, the sky a single flat sheet of pewter pressed down over the rooftops. Air heavy and wet and going nowhere. No sun, no shadow, only that diffuse gray that turns every lawn and window into a set dressed for something that hasn't happened yet.

I had never made a portrait on a dry plate. Landscapes, yeah, but not a person.

The camera: Eastman View Camera No. 33A. The lens: a 5x7 Planatograph. Wood, brass, bellows, glass. Nothing in it runs on electricity.

I went under the dark cloth and found Claire on the glass; I slid the plate in. She held still.

Two and a half seconds. Three.

The emulsion is rated ISO 3, so it drinks light slowly and gives it back hard. Glass is an inherently high-contrast medium: highlights want to burn, shadows want to go to ink, and a face has to find its way down the narrow road between. On a gray afternoon, every plate was a negotiation between the sky, the lens, and how long a person can stop breathing and become a statue.

Then there was me. I have an uncanny ability to ignore instructions and go with my gut. Glass punishes that, and sometimes it rewards it. You don't find out which until the image rises in the tray.

We kept at it for five hours of trial, error, chemistry, and doubt. The darkroom had that Lynch hum, a red glow and dripping water, the uneasy feeling of a room that knows more than you do. Every image appeared slowly, first a ghost, then a person.

By evening there was a portrait on glass, actually 10.

A basement that rained for a week. A Slovenian emulsion rated at three. A camera built before the war. A photographer who doesn't read the instructions. And Claire, who held still long enough for the light to find her, and for the glass to keep her.

the plates