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Golden beets
Tintype photograph
© Tif Hunter |
A couple of years ago I wrote an article for The Foodie Bugle magazine titled 'On Maltby Street' celebrating the work of photographer Tif Hunter. It was a piece where my triumvirate of passions - food, photography and art - came together in one ideal package. The recent release of the Toast menswear Lookbook Spring/Summer 2015, shot by Tif using the Tintype process, prompted me to review and update my earlier article and reproduce it here. I hope you like it and that it stirs an interest in the medium for you too.
All images are the copyright of Tif Hunter.
My
first sighting of Tif Hunter, the photographer, was in a dank alley alongside Victorian
railway arches in South London. Hunched
over a wooden box set on a tripod, his concentration was total. Clearly this was a camera but one belonging
to another era. He drew curious glances
from a few early morning shoppers. Over
the following weeks I registered the man’s quiet presence as I worked my way
around my regular Saturday morning haunts. Intrigued but mindful of disturbing his
concentration, I walked on by. Then he
was gone and I’d missed my chance to discover just what he was up to.
Several
months later a blog post from my favourite local social historian popped up on
my computer screen. ‘The Gentle Author’
blogs each and every day about life, past and present, in and around his
beloved London borough of Spitalfields.
Photography is a favourite means of expression for him and once you
discover this wonderful blog you become hooked on a daily dose of prose and,
often haunting, images. This particular
day brought moody, arresting portraits.
Each subject held the eye with a strong, confident gaze; but were they contemporary
or from a time past? It was difficult to
say at first glance. Yet I recognised
every single one of them, each captured in a pause in the working day. They were the food traders I buy from every Saturday.
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Elliott
Polaroid photograph
© Tif Hunter |
These
photographs were the work of my mystery man, Tif Hunter. By talking to the traders I learned there
were more wonderful portraits and they shyly shared some of them with me. There was a quiet pride, shared vicariously
by those of us who knew the subjects. Appetite
by now thoroughly stimulated, thankfully Tif Hunter opened his studio in
Bermondsey to show all of the
portraits. Alongside these hangings was another
of his enthusiasms, ‘still-lifes’ using the Tintype process employed by early
photographic pioneers. The show was
called ‘On Maltby Street 2011’ and was a project documenting the Saturday
morning shopping scene in this Bermondsey food haven. Nigel Slater has described Maltby Street as “A slightly secret and hidden place, where
supply goes with the ebb and flow of the seasons, where there is a constantly
evolving group of traders bringing things to tempt and delight”. For Tif this exactly describes the area and
its inhabitants that he knows so well – his perfect High Street.
The
studio sits just in the unfashionable side of Bermondsey, away from the Fashion
Museum and the hip White Cube Gallery. A
wonderfully understated space with grey plaster and exposed brick walls. On entering, you can’t miss, centre stage,
the beautiful 10x8 specially-made wooden camera with antique brass lens. This
is the camera on which the Tintypes were shot.
Alongside, and sharing exactly the same overall technology, is a 5x4 Sinar precision Swiss made, large
format, camera with a Schneider lens dating from the 1970s. This very different beast allowed Tif to
achieve his striking portraits using scarce Polaroid Type 55 film.
The
Type 55 film produces an instant positive print and a fine-grained, long tonal
range, extremely high resolution negative.
The negative needs to be dipped in fixer to protect it from scratching
before the final prints can be made. Tif
rapidly got to know, intuitively, when he had the shot he wanted. After a few attempts at carrying chemicals to
do the fixing ‘in the field’, he began to dash back to his nearby studio. By peeling back the film here, he was able to
minimise damage to the negative image before fixing it in a more controlled
manner.
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Katie
Polaroid photograph
© Tif Hunter |
Begun
in Spring 2011, the portraits on show included butchers, bakers and, yes, even
a candlestick maker (Steve Benbow, otherwise known as The London Honeyman, who
sells beeswax candles as well as honey).
Most subjects look intently and confidently straight into the camera, their
faces full of character. No instructions
were given, other than to look into the lens and keep very still when
asked. Most of the faces register
curiosity in what’s going on beyond that lens.
All are shot in natural light and
the results are unsparing in their detail.
Tif talks passionately about the photograph of Emma – calm,
self-contained, hair blowing in the breeze, her spotted dress echoed in the
weather-pitted backdrop to the shot.
So
what is it like being the subject of one of Tif’s portraits? None of the sitters could imagine what the
outcome of their few moments in front of the camera was to be. There was a certain amount of reticence. Lucie just remembers being “pulled outside”
without any time to think about it.
Standing for a full 5 minutes gazing into the lens, Archie felt the
nearness of the camera, a little too close for comfort, but was fascinated by
the mystique of the old-style techniques. Harry recalls the cold and thinking
he couldn’t really spare the time in his working day for this. These portraits show the affection of the
photographer for his subjects and a reciprocated admiration of traditional
skills.
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Green Tomatoes
Tintype photograph
© Tif Hunter |
We
move on to the Tintypes. Dating from
1856, Tintypes are a variant on the wet-plate collodion method invented by
Englishman Frederick Scott Archer in 1851.
Although not used much in this country, tintypes were valued in the USA
into the early 1900’s for their affordability and durability, and the fact you
could create a unique photograph almost immediately. We’ve all seen those images of American Civil
War soldiers posing proudly in their uniforms.
Tintypes were the medium of choice where a blackened sheet of metal is
coated with collodion, sensitised in silver nitrate, and, whilst still wet, the
sheet is placed in the camera.
Developing and fixing follow immediately after the picture is taken and
the image is then washed, dried and varnished.
This
is the process Tif used for his still-life photographs of the produce he was
buying from these artisan traders. Since the Tintype is a camera-original
positive, all Tintype images appear reversed (left-to-right) from reality. This is particularly evident in the writing on
an oatmeal tin filled with fresh flowers, which is one of the still-life images. From the Tintypes he produced, Tif made
printed enlargements of some which proved a fascinating addition to the ‘On
Maltby Street’ project.
It was intriguing to find that a group of red
tomatoes appear very dark with highlights provided by natural light, yet a similar
group of under-ripe green tomatoes appear similarly dark. This is because the camera picks up the red
pigment which is also in the unripe fruit; it’s just that the eye cannot see it
as it’s at the UV end of the spectrum, not the red.
Q&A
Q. You’re a professional
photographer working with the latest equipment so what inspired you to go back
to basics and shoot with a large format plate camera?
A. After a
number of years of shooting only digitally I felt that I needed to return to
the magic of the analogue and the darkroom.
Embracing both the craft and the unexpected in these methods was how I
had started in photography. In the
Tintype medium, the alchemy and physical textural qualities of the results is
that much more amazing than the black and white methods that I had already
known.
Q. We’re now so used to being able to check
immediately what the image we’ve taken looks like, but how much idea do you
have of the result when you’ve taken the photograph?
A. Polaroid 55 Film is very scarce so you can’t afford to waste it. Consequently I limited myself to a maximum of
2 sheets per subject so I have to know by instinct when it’s right.
Q. What drew you to the subject of food traders?
A. Obviously
I have a love of good food. I feel so
lucky to be able to ‘shop local’ and have my own village High Street here in
Bermondsey. This project is very close
to my heart and it was an opportunity to celebrate the artisans and the medium.
Q. What, or who, influenced you to work with the
tintype process?
A. I came
across Tintypes when doing some research on the Internet. Finding John Coffer, the father of Tintypes,
was the catalyst. I’m now completely
addicted.
Q. I know artists are rarely completely satisfied
with their work but how do you feel about this project and do you plan to
continue with it?
A. You’re
right, it’s hard to be completely satisfied but I’ve loved doing it. I may add a few more portraits and will definitely
shoot more food related still lifes but I regard the project as complete.
Q. Do you have any other personal projects
planned?
A. Yes,
but they are only thoughts at the moment.
I do want to continue to shoot portraits but I’m interested in Tintypes this
time.
Before
I leave, Tif shows me a Tintype portrait he has taken of a fellow
photographer. With Tintypes the pose has
to be held for longer so who better than a sympathetic fellow photographer to sit
for you. The subject is framed standing
to the left of centre, as if he has just entered the room, paused, and is
weighing up the situation. Highly
atmospheric, it’s a beautiful example of what can be achieved when you go back
to basics. Tif mentions the sitter, on
seeing the result, commented “you’ve brought out the Irish in me”. If these forays into Tintype portraits result
in an exhibition, I for one will be first in line for a viewing.
Update on the traders ‘On Maltby Street 2011’ at April 2015:
Most of the original artisan traders ‘On Maltby Street’ have now
moved 10 minutes East but can still be found occupying the Bermondsey railway
arches in an area known as Spa Terminus
About Tif Hunter
Tif
Hunter is an award-winning advertising and editorial photographer who has
exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London. His extensive body of work
includes a collaboration with Stephen Bayley on “Cars – Freedom, Style, Sex,
Power, Motion, Colour, Everything”.
In
October 2012 Tif Hunter’s Tintype of a Romanesco vegetable won Best in Category
for Non-Commissioned Object at the AOP (The Association of Photographers) Awards. Tif Hunter was elected a member
of The Art Workers’ Guild. In
2014, as part of the Negativeless exhibition at the Michael Hoppen Gallery, he
exhibited an intriguing piece called Rochambeau, a combination of skilled
carpentry and inspired tintype images. Among Tif Hunter’s
latest work is the Toast Spring/Summer 2015 Lookbook
employing the
Tintype portrait methods I’ve been lucky enough to see him use at his studio.
See also:
About The Gentle Author
