Daniel Carrillo Documents a Moment in Seattle Art History

A couple of weeks ago I accompanied Emily Pothast for her sitting with Daniel Carrillo at his Georgetown studio. Emily's partner David Golightly and I joked around, assisted Dan, watched, and otherwise occupied ourselves while the more technical aspects of the day went on. Truthfully, it was my second time down for a shoot - I'd had my own set of shots done a few weeks prior and this time was as fascinating and informative experience as the first.

Daniel's project started out as an exploratory exercise in a technique he thought was really cool, but now it's turning into a truly concrete documentation of Seattle art history. I'm hopelessly in love with this idea, and Carrillo's recording is an intimate, quiet, slightly reverent, certainly nurturing and tender capture. For the nervous, his easy demeanor and ability to coax the hyper into relaxing for the camera is a soothing balm. For the confident, his adept ability to keenly direct one's eyes and flatter with lights only makes the beautiful shine even brighter.

There's another, larger reason I'm into this project. If you've been reading a while, you know I'm a supporter of New York artist Matt Held's Facebook Portrait project, now in it's second phase. I wrote a bit about how portraiture is gaining new significance in the age of social networking, and how documentation has changed in regards to who's posing and who's holding. I'm seeing something of a loose kinship between Held and Carrillo, but through almost opposite means. Matt captures moments of people's self-documentation by painting either a flash-lit arm's length shot or candid paparazzi-style party photo - one which might have also been synthetically enhanced through Photoshop. Daniel is reintegrating the unhurried process of forcing a subject to sit still while the lens unflinchingly records every line and pore of their visage - completely un-enhanced by Photoshop. The common ground comes through how they both are utilising their networks through social media and both are changing the way we look at portraiture, whether it's through the exaggerated mirror of a meta-lens or bringing it right back to the beholder and beholden.

One thing Daniel mentioned during our shoot sticks with me as I look through all these portraits. He talked about how developing digital images is so different than more antiquated forms of photography. It's not that you don't still set up, plan ahead, and choose your shot carefully for digital work; it's that the slow technique of this process forces you to be even more deliberate and particular before you open the aperture. Every plate counts because wet plate collodion ambrotype isn't just measured in aesthetic value, but in time as well. Susanna Bluhm adresses this in her post about this series (she's wondering if it's different and I believe it might be):

"Generally, we relentless, digital-age, everyday photographers do a lot of self-editing. Facebook is flooded with head shots taken exactly one arm’s length away. Moving through the world with our cameras, we bask in the freedom to shoot hundreds of photos, trigger happy and swept up in the moment. So, with Daniel’s portraits, I’m struck by the way these subjects had no control over their resulting pictures. Their images were completely in the hands of the photographer, and in his ability to manipulate a complicated process. What results is an intricate vulnerability; an intimacy that you wouldn’t expect from a posed portrait shot over many seconds."

Above all else, I love how the process of wet plate collodion brings out the fierceness in everyone. Simply by virtue of the lens objectively gazing at us [gazing somewhere else] neutral and breathing, we are ourselves. Reflecting a metaphor of the lives we've lived, in these photos, time reveals our traits and the truth of who we are and how others see us is inescapably beautiful.

I've posted a Flickr set of images from Emily's shoot. Amanda Manitach and Emily Pothast have written a bit about their experience, Jen Graves included his work in today's piece on Seattle's New Guard dinner series, and Regina Hackett wrote a blurb in December. You'll be able to see a few of Daniel's portraits up this month at Some Space, but as there isn't an opening tonight you'll have to catch them another time when the shop is open (closed after 6 tonight for First Thursday). Upcoming later in February you will be able to catch this series at Gage Academy in the Entry Gallery:

Prints and Ambrotypes by Daniel Carrillo

February 26 - March 22

Artists’ Reception: Friday February 26, 6:00-8:00pm

Daniel's self portrait of himself, one of the first in the series

my view of the view of her viewing

Daniel's candid shot of me yakkin'

your turn - an open seat and a ton of potential