Making a tintype is as time-consuming as it is painstaking. But one digital photographer says she’s fallen in love with the Civil War-era process.
“I spend so much time staring at my computer, so when I get home, I want to make something tactile and beautiful,” said the artist, Melitte Buchman.
Her modern tintypes are finding buyers at Swallow Gallery, which stocks them next to vintage ones.
“Looking at a [modern tintype], you feel like you’ve fallen out of the present,” said Urte Tylaite, who works at Swallow.
The artist’s first tintype was of her computer mouse. Portraits followed, even though the chemical process tends to make skin look leathery. Also, subjects often appear stiff since they must hold still for up to 10 seconds while the picture — a direct positive — is being formed on a thin piece of iron.
Still, Buchman thinks that tintypes are worth their weight in gold.
“When tintype portraits were first made, people had never seen themselves before. Modern tintypes retain that sense of discovery.”
“Recent Tintypes” at Swallow Gallery [361 Smith St. in Carroll Gardens, (718) 222-8201] until Jan. 22.
