Lisa Elmaleh | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | July 20, 1984 Miami, Florida |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education | BFA, School of Visual Arts |
| Website | https://www.lisaelmaleh.com/ |
Lisa Elmaleh is an American visual artist, educator, and documentarian based in Hampshire County, West Virginia. She specializes in large-format photography using tintype, glass negative, and celluloid film. Since 2007, she has been traveling across the United States documenting American landscapes, life, and culture.
Born in Miami, Florida 1984 [1] Elmaleh grew up in a small apartment with her mother on a limited income. Her father was a photographer who worked with landscapes; Elmaleh recalls watching him develop photographs in a darkroom, saying "the magic of the images...stuck with me". [2] She attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2007. [3]
Elmaleh creates tintype photographs, learning the collodion process in 2007. Her preferred camera is the Century Universal; she uses a Schneider Kreuznach 300mm lens. [4] The wet collodion process means that images must be shot and developed while the chemicals are still wet on the plate. [5] Many of her photographs focus on Appalachian folk musicians. She converted a Toyota Tacoma truck into a mobile darkroom —driving to meet her subjects. [1] Because of the time constraints of the collodion process, Elmaleh develops the photographs within thirty minutes of taking them. Images are taken and developed one at a time. [5]
Some of Elmaleh's works include: [5]
She moved to Paw Paw, West Virginia from Brooklyn in 2014. [1]
The collodion process is an early photographic process. The collodion process, mostly synonymous with the "collodion wet plate process", requires the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed, and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. Collodion is normally used in its wet form, but it can also be used in its dry form, at the cost of greatly increased exposure time. The increased exposure time made the dry form unsuitable for the usual portraiture work of most professional photographers of the 19th century. The use of the dry form was mostly confined to landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable.
Collodion is a flammable, syrupy solution of nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol. There are two basic types: flexible and non-flexible. The flexible type is often used as a surgical dressing or to hold dressings in place. When painted on the skin, collodion dries to form a flexible nitrocellulose film. While it is initially colorless, it discolors over time. Non-flexible collodion is often used in theatrical make-up. Collodion was also the basis of most wet-plate photography until it was superseded by modern gelatin emulsions.
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