Wet Collodion Portraits -Colin Ford ( National Portrait Gallery)

WET COLLODION PORTRAIT OF COLIN FORD- FORMER CURATOR OF NPG & JULIA CAMERON RESEARCHER

Colin Ford is a former museum director, keeper of Film and Photography at the National Portrait Gallery and Julia Margaret Cameron's biographer who stopped the export of her album from the UK.

Colin Ford's was celebrating his 90th birthday at Bodleian Library, Oxford University with event of letter Julia Margaret Cameron letter reading where portraits were officially presented.

THE PROCESS

• Session took about 2.5h and plates were processed ‘on the spot’

• It resulted in four wet collodion plates- two on transparent glass and two on the black painted 4mm glass, 18x24cm in size.

• After the photoshoot plates had to be varnished for protection and varnish took a week to dry after which point they were ready to be handed over.

• Presentation: Took place in May 2024 at Bodleian Library celebrating Colin’s 90’s birthday

ALBUMEN PRINTS

Colin spent large portion of his career researching Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and is an established author of several of her biographies. Together with actress Charity Wakefield & photographer Laura Hart, who helped produce the shoot, we took Colin's portrait inspired by Julia Margaret Cameron's portrait of John Hershel- early inventor of photographic processes such as cyanotype & photographic fixer. As majority of Julia’s work exists in form of albumen prints, 4 of them were made and within two weeks, presented alongside original wet plates and gifted to Colin afterwards.