From the Artist: Robin Dreyer
Robin Dreyer is 1 of 4 artists currently exhibiting at Castell Photography as a part of our invitational group exhibition, Lens on the Land: A Collection of North Carolinian Landscapes. Robin is the final Lens on the Land artist that we will be featuring, if you haven’t had a chance to see this lovely group exhibition it will be hanging through the end of June! When photographing the landscape, my first impulse is to look for points of intersection between human activity and the natural world. These create scale, context, and focus in the photographs, which I hope will enhance our ability to see and appreciate the landscape as well as the lovely, strange, and sad things we humans do. This idea does not, however, apply to the daguerreotypes in this show. These images simply explore forms and patterns created by the trees near my house along with the odd and unpredictable characteristics of the process itself. All of the images were made in Yancey and Mitchell counties except the photograph titled Easy Chair, which was made on Old Haw Creek Road in Asheville. A bit about the daguerrotype process: A daguerreotype is an image produced on a polished, sensitized silver surface. The daguerreotype was introduced in 1839 and was the first practical form of photography. The process starts with a sheet of copper that has been plated with approximately one-thousandth of an inch of fine silver. The silver surface is wheel-polished and hand-buffed. The plate is then placed face down in a box that contains iodine crystals. The iodine fumes combine with the silver to form light-sensitive silver iodide. There is no film involved; the plates are exposed directly in the camera. After development, the image is toned with gold chloride and sandwiched to a sheet of glass separated from the plate by a metal or paper mat. The daguerreotype image is very durable (they don’t fade) but surface of the plate is physically quite fragile (they scratch easily). This is why they are always cased with a sheet of glass. Although it’s possible to present daguerreotypes framed on the wall, they can be hard to see unless the lighting is just right. This is because the dark parts of the image are unexposed, reflective silver and they only appear black if they are reflecting something black. This phenomenon can sometimes make the image shift from positive to negative depending on the angle of view. Most of these plates are presented here in the way that was most common in the 19th century—in a hand-held case. If you hold the case in your hand with the lid at about a 45-degree angle and let strong light fall on the plate, you should get optimum conditions for viewing the full tonal range of the image. It is possible to display them in the cases by standing the vertical images up with the case halfway open or laying the horizontal images down and propping the case open with a toothpick. So why would anyone in the 21st century bother to make pictures through a labor-intensive method that results in an image that’s hard to display? Because, as I hope you can see, the daguerreotype has a uniquely compelling visual quality that isn’t really reproduced by any other medium.
These images truly must be seen in person, don’t miss you chance to see these 1 of a kind creations! All work will be in the gallery for just a few more weeks, and can also be found
