Working with Glass Plate Orotones

From time to time I’m asked about my strapline — Historic Process · Contemporary Practice — and what it really represents in the day-to-day reality of my work.

In recent years I’ve become increasingly associated with the making of glass plate Orotones, and they offer a very tangible expression of that philosophy. The plates I work with are based on the dry plate process, itself an evolution of the earlier wet plate collodion method. Unlike the wet process, which required coating and exposing the plate in immediate succession, dry plates could be prepared in advance, stored, and then developed later in the calm and considered environment of the darkroom.

Exhibition Orotone Print

This innovation helped photography move beyond the purely specialist pursuit it once was. By the early twentieth century, however, the arrival of celluloid film brought about a profound shift — opening photography to wider audiences, but gradually pushing many of these tactile and materially rich techniques into obscurity.

Today, there is a quiet but meaningful resurgence. A small community of artists and craftspeople has begun to re-explore these historic processes, not out of nostalgia, but from a desire to reconnect with the physical act of image-making. Dry plates are once again being produced — not in industrial quantities, but through dedicated workshops committed to craft. Modern chemistry has also allowed safer alternatives to replace some of the harsher materials once used, making the practice more sustainable without losing its essential character.

Window and Vine

The transformation into an orotone occurs after the image is made. The negative is rendered into a positive, single-toned image on glass, and the reverse of the plate is then coated with a delicate, gel-like layer containing fine metallic particles — often gold, copper or bronze. It is this stage that gives the finished piece its distinctive luminosity. The image seems to shift and breathe with changing light, revealing different moods depending on how and where it is viewed.

Although the work itself unfolds within the quiet discipline of the darkroom, the intention is very much contemporary. Each plate becomes a considered, limited edition art object — something that carries the lyricism of early photographic practice while still speaking in a modern visual language.

Abandoned

For me, this balance between past and present is not simply technical. It is a way of slowing down, of engaging more deeply with the act of seeing, and of allowing the finished image to exist as a physical presence rather than a fleeting digital moment.