Hold still.
Half plate portraits, shot on sheet film by one north window. Two hours in the studio, twelve sheets exposed, and nothing to look at until the prints come back.
There is no screen on the back of a field camera.
Which means the sitting is two people in a room rather than two people looking at a picture of a room.
Two hours, twelve sheets.
One camera on one tripod, set once and left. What moves is you.
- 01
We talk first
Half an hour before a sheet is loaded. What the picture is for, where it will hang, and what you cannot stand about photographs of yourself.
- 02
The light is found
One north window and a white card. Nothing is switched on. When the light is right the camera is set, and it does not move again all afternoon.
- 03
One sheet at a time
Focused upside down on the ground glass, the holder pushed in, the slide pulled, one exposure. It takes a minute a frame, which is why you stop performing by the fourth.
- 04
You leave with nothing
The sheets go into the darkroom that evening. A contact sheet reaches you within the fortnight and the hand prints about six weeks after that.
The turn, sheet by sheet.
The camera stays where it is. Every frame here is the same afternoon and the same chair.
What a sitting is.
A different afternoon.
Same window, same camera, colour film instead of black and white. The chair is the only thing the two sitters have in common.
You stop performing about the fourth sheet. By the eighth you are sitting there thinking about something else, and that is the one we print.
Book a sitting.
Tell us who it is for and roughly when. Sittings run Tuesday to Friday, one a day, and the diary is about six weeks out.