fine art photography collodion light at lacock photogenic drawing pigment prints

THIS IS A NEW BODY OF WORK by Mark Osterman and France Scully Osterman and is their first collaboration as artists.

Other work (collodion) will be added soon. Meanwhile, please click on their galleries' links:

Tilt Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ:

Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC:

Excerpts from The Light at Lacock:

The following images were made at Lacock Abbey from paper negatives exposed within small wooden cameras identical in design to those used by Talbot for his first experiments. A small hole in the front of each camera allowed viewing and focusing the projected image directly upon the sensitive paper within. Like viewing celestial scenes with a reflection telescope, the technique involved aiming the camera over the shoulder to reveal the subject behind.

Every morning at the Abbey barn we sensitized small sheets of paper with silver nitrate and table salt and fitted them into eight small cameras. Then, as a trapper sets a trap line, we walked the same steps as Talbot throughout the Abbey and grounds.

	When usable daylight ceased, we retraced our steps and gathered up the cameras hoping none had been disturbed. Then, back at the barn we opened up our cameras. Like cleaving geodes we were amazed by the gift of the fully formed negatives within; like water colors sketched by the sun. It was easy to drift away from Talbot's path and stray beyond....

While scanning the first tests of our fragile negatives we were curious to see how they might translate as positive images. At the crossroads of these two technologies we discovered that digitally inverting the photogenic drawing negatives into positives revealed more than Talbot could have ever dreamed.

Inversion of the negatives also reversed the colors to hues unknown to Talbot. Some of these were retained in the exhibition prints while other positives were manipulated to reflect the amazing, though fugitive, colors one might expect from an original photogenic drawing from Talbot's time.

Like recalling the memory of a dream, the positives were smooth, familiar and yet complex. There was no expectation that even a ghost of the hundreds of visitors who visit the Abbey on a typical day would appear on the paper during the two to six hour exposures. But looking at these pictures there is a presence of all who have ever walked there.

View from Talbot's Grave (variant),
©2010 Scully & Osterman

Pear Tree in the Cloisters,
©2010 Scully & Osterman

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©2010 Scully & Osterman

Looking upward we noticed that the trees within the Abbey walls and in the surrounding fields were easily described by the sky around them. And so, we began to photograph the sky, even in the driving rain.

Light and foreshortened tree limbs seemed transformed into spheres with weight and mass, creating the illusion of a celestial body.

Ultimately it was energy that was the actual subject; the light at Lacock.

Mark Osterman and
France Scully Osterman

SOLD OUT!! Second Ed. Available in October 2011 This 5 1/2" 24 page square booklet is for sale. Please visit publications page for more details.

For more information about The Light at Lacock, click EXHIBIT link

[To see exhibit photos at Mark Osterman's page on facebook click HERE]