Collodion tintype photography, invented in the 1850s and commonly used for portraiture during the later part of the 19th century, involves exposing blackened metal plates coated with light sensitive, silver-based emulsion in a large format bellows camera. Each tintype is a unique, permanent, one of a kind image object, with no intermediate negative or file used in its production. Tintypes exemplify a return to hand crafted image making. Their beguiling materiality is rarely encountered in modern photography.

Someone wisely once said “When you photograph someone in colour you are photographing their clothes. When you photograph someone in black & white you are photographing their souls.” Collodion tintypes, like all early photographic techniques are monochrome unless they have been subsequently hand coloured.