FULL EXPOSURE

Photographer Conor Martin documents the present using photographic methods of the past.

- JOHN O'HERN

The photographer William Henry Jackson and the painter Thomas Moran accompanied the Hayden Expedition to Yellowstone in 1871. Their teamwork resulted in photos and paintings that helped convince Congress to name Yellowstone the country’s first national park in 1872.

Today we take our smart phone out of our pocket, take a photo of Yellowstone and send it to a friend on the opposite side of the earth in a matter of seconds. Jackson (1843-1942) traveled with a mule he named “Hypo” after a chemical used in the developing process. Hypo was laden with tripods, cameras, glass plate negatives, a portable darkroom and bottles of photographic chemicals.

Despite the availability and ease of smartphones and digital cameras, some artists today are bringing back the old cameras and developing processes.

Conor Martin shoots portraits on the streets of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a 4-by-5-inch view camera. He processes tintypes in a makeshift darkroom in the back of his pickup truck “with a cardboard box and a lot of black cloth,” he explains. “It can be challenging but it also gives me mobility and allows me a more spontaneous and informal approach.” He has also traveled through India with his friend Vibhav Kapoor documenting, as Kapoor describes, “sacred spaces and ancient temples to participate in what is known in this Hindu tradition as darśan (‘to see divinity’).” They have produced a limited-edition book,