Photography
“Echoes of History”
Teacher: Josh Birnbaum
Co-Teacher: Francine Orr
This year’s photography classes focused on leading youth in researching history and creating reenacted scenes, moments, and people through a historical photographic process, the tintype photograph — a monochromatic photo on tin. In doing so, the class introduced children to the basics of photography including historic camera technologies, guided documentary and artistic assignments, development of creative instinct, collaborative crafting and staging, manipulation of materials, and visualization of history.
Students devised a scene from history to perform and capture through photography. After a discussion with local historian Brian Koscho of Invisible Ground, the students were guided in pre-visualization through a series of questions about elements they wanted to include, like people and costumes and props, and where they would like to take the picture or how they want to set it up. They directed their picture while other students in the class helped make it come to life!
Students were taught to use a Speed Graphic camera with 4”x5” tintype plates that were pre-coated with light-sensitive emulsion. They learned the process of loading the plates into plate holders, setting up the camera on the tripod, composing and focusing, getting exposure right, loading the plate and removing the dark slide to take the picture. Then they got to develop the image in a traditional darkroom and see the latent image appear chemically on the metal plate — the magic of darkroom photography!
