Rik Garrett Photography

These images are the result of making something new from something old – photographs that were in some way unsatisfactory.  Photographs previously made using the wet plate collodion process were stripped of their emulsion, leaving a piece of plain glass.  Edward Weston did this at a turning point in his photographic career, then using the glass to build a greenhouse.  My approach has been similar, but rather than retain the glass I have taken the scrapings of flammable collodion (also known as gun cotton), laying them on a piece of photographic paper in a darkened room.  The pile of shavings which once constituted an image is then lit on fire, exposing the photographic paper and thereby creating something brand new – a unique photographic print, marking the destruction of an old photograph and the birth of a unique photographic print.