This two-day, hands-on workshop, hosted by artist and educator Maurene Cooper, will be held at the Emerald Street Community Farm at 2300 Emerald S. Philadelphia, PA 19125. The format and materials used in this workshop mirror Cooper’s work on tin with natural light.

In this outdoor, location-based workshop, participants will review best practices with tintype image-making. Students will receive hands-on training in trouble shooting a range of location- and heat-based scenarios that affect collodion when shooting outdoors in summer. Both days will focus on “how to see and photograph natural light” in a range of outdoor locations.

On Day One, students will receive a refresher on the use of large format cameras, as well as demonstrations and hands-on instruction with pouring collodion, developing in a travel darkroom, and washing plates with vegetable glycerin. Students will shoot test plates at a range of exposure times in direct and diffused sunlight, as well as full shade.

On Day Two, students will choose locations around the property and use the plates from Day One to execute their own images. Students will learn to mix chemistry and create organizational systems to identify chemical- and light-based fog.

Students will shoot a minimum of six plates each day.

This workshop is geared toward those with experience in wet plate collodion.

Materials will be provided by The Halide Project. If you have your own 4x5 cameras and plate holders that you already use to shoot wet plate, please feel free to bring them.

Workshop Withdrawal Policy

We recommend choosing workshops with care after reading our withdrawal policy. If you have questions about any of our workshops, please contact dale@thehalideproject.org

Instructor Bio:

Helen Maurene Cooper is an artist and educator living in Philadelphia, PA. She earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Bard College. She has exhibited widely, nationally, and internationally; Onomatopee (Eindhoven, Netherlands), Clare Morris Gallery ( Ireland),  Soap Factory (Minneapolis), Space Mountain (Miami), and Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation (Chicago). 

Awards and Fellowships include Art is Essential Grant, through the Knight Foundation for her current project for The Caregivers, in both 2020 and 2021, the Cultural Council of Eindhoven, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and the University of Chicago. Her 2017 monograph, Paint & Polish: Visual Economy and Visual Culture from the West Side (Onomatopee, Eindhoven Netherlands). Paint & Polish was reviewed in Bust.com, New City, Nails Magazine, and the Creators Vice Magazine. Artists' talks have been given at PS1, The Fashion Institute of Technology, Kansas City Art Institute, Elmhurst Art Museum, The Arts Incubator at the University of Chicago, and Oxbow School of Painting.

Cooper began her study of wet plate photography with France Scully Osterman in 2013. People of the Caregivers (2020-Present) is her second body of ambrotype plates.  

This workshop is generously sponsored by The Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.