Focal Point: Return of an era

Having all but disappeared for the past 80 years or so, collodion wet plate process – better known as tintype photography – has recently made an unexpected comeback.

Over the past year, staff photographer Antonie Robertson gathered the materials to start producing these images. He mixes the emulsion from scratch, pours it onto a polished metal plate, makes the exposure, then processes the plate.

This portrait of Emirati artist Hamdan Al Abri shows the beauty of the process, both in its clarity and its wonderful and quirky imperfections: edges where the emulsion trailed off, slight swirls and rough spots where the metal plate might have had an imperfection.

– Brian Kerrigan, photo editor