tintype

Max Li practices tintype photography, a historical and tangible photographic process from the Victorian era. His tintype booth travels to various locations, capturing events, individuals, communities, landscapes, and a wide range of subjects.

Tintype, or wet plate collodion, is an organic, Victorian-era photographic process that captures its subject onto a metal plate – making a tangible image that can endure for hundreds of years. The process was invented in the early 1800s, documented the US civil war, and continued to be used for image-making until the latter part of the 19th century, then arrived technologies such as ambrotype, dry plate, gelatin film, digital cameras, smartphones, VR, etc.

Tintypes must be taken and developed while wet; therefore, each plate has only a few minutes of viability before it dries up. This is why tintypes are always developed onsite, capacitively, leaving audiences in awe as the image gradually emerges from the 'blue.'