Paul Taylor & Bill Schwab: Wet Plate

June 2010 – August 2010

Ortahisar I Capadochia. Copyright Paul Taylor

Wet Plate showcased artists Paul Taylor and Bill Schwab, who use 4″ x 5″ to 8″ x 10″ view cameras and the wet plate process to create their photographic images.

As a part of the 2nd Louisville Visual Arts Festival, the gallery exhibited photographs created using the historic wet plate collodion process. This process, which was invented in 1851 and dominated photography until 1875, uses large format cameras to make negatives on plates of glass or blackened metal. These plates must be coated with a light sensitive solution, exposed in the camera, and then developed, all before the plate dries out.