In these digital times a culture is often
defined by the imagery that portrays it, and the way that it is presented to
the wider world. By and large, modern
surfing imagery is action-oriented, so what happens when an acclaimed
photographer with no previous connection to surfing decides to document it in a
decade long photography project? SurfSite Tin Type happens, that’s what.
Joni Sternbach is a Brooklyn based
photographer whose tintype portraits of surfers, made using nineteenth-century “wet
plate” techniques on large-format field cameras, have broken the mold for surf
images and seem to have captured the essence of her international subjects, all
of whom share surfing as a common bond. This is civil war era photography that
involves setting up a darkroom on the beach, and Joni has travelled to California,
Australia and finally to Europe to produce her images for her exhibitions and
book. That’s where I caught up
with her, and after helping her to carry her dark room kit across the beach I sat down to ask her a few questions about her work.
Joni,
your “Surfland” images are remarkably different from the sort of high-octane
digital images that surf media is saturated with these days. What inspired you to embark on creating this
series of images?
Well, I learnt how to make a tintype in
1999 and I didn’t really intend to embark on a ten-year project with that
process. I just went to a guy’s log cabin in upstate New York to learn about
what it was and just fell in love with it immediately. You were on the beach with us the other day
and watched us pull a plate; you saw the way that people reacted to seeing
their image fix on the beach, it just never fails to delight. And so the immediacy of the process and the
hand-made nature are these two things that work so brilliantly together to
create…I don’t know, the kind of image they create feels a little more soulful
– they look a little more tactile and real; they remind you of something that
you’ve seen but not exactly. You know
what I mean? So, they have this
familiarity and yet they’re completely new and unknown. I think those combinations of opposites work
so well together to create an object that people find compelling.
How
did you first come to have a surfer “sit” for your camera?
Well, my first surfer was shot from the
same bluffs that I was shooting at for the previous five years – I was working
the same landscape for a long time, I’ll just say that – and I ran into
somebody on the top of the bluff and I asked him if he was a surfer, he said he
was, I asked him to pose and he said no.
His girlfriend hit him gently in the head and said “of course you will”
and he did. So he ran down the bluff while
I coated my plate and by the time he got down there, into his rash guard and
posed, my plate was ready. There was no communication between us at that point
–he was way far away on the beach and there were no directions given. He stood still and was ready to move only
when I gave the thumbs up or whistled that the shot was done. So he stood there and we made a picture and
he’s tiny in this great big landscape.
It was like, “holy crap, this is beautiful”. It was a completely overcast day, my
chemistry was probably really crapped out too, and he is this strong, white solid
object in this very misty and mushy landscape.
My assistant and I looked at each other and said, “We’ve got to do this”
and then we made our way down to the beach and started talking to people. I was terrified!
Why
surfers – what is it about surfers that interests you?
Exactly, why surfers! There is absolutely no reason why surfers
except, in 2002, I was out shooting a landscape of the sea and sky (this was a
series I was working on) and I had my camera all set up. It had been a really stormy, cloudy day the
day before and foggy. If you were to
imagine the sun coming through here, all dark clouds and then the sun sends
down these rays onto the ocean, where there just happen to be about 20-30
people in black wetsuits out on the water.
They’re not going anywhere, right?
And snap, you make this picture and the light goes off in such a way
that gives you goose bumps and makes you think that you have experienced
heaven. So I took this one picture, and
it was not a picture about surfing or
surfers, it was a landscape picture. But
at that moment, I felt like I had a connection to all those people in the sea
because, it was like I could hear them from the bluffs. We all went off on this thing together. I don’t know who it was in the water – I may
know them now but I didn’t then, but we all experienced one of those most
divine moments of light and ocean. So
the reason why I went back to the bluffs to photograph a surfer was because of
that moment.
What
is your take on the surfing tribe, as an artist making a study of them (us)?
Well, it’s funny that you should ask. So, I had no idea about anything about
surfing. It wasn’t until two years into
the project that I even looked at a book “History of Surfing,” right, I just
went in blind and decided that blind was the best way to be. Because, there’s an innocence to ignorance, right,
and I wasn’t really like a surf enthusiast, I was just interested in this
collection of people that have one thing in common but otherwise may have
nothing in common. And, they’re all
different types of people and I could go to this one location with this very
elaborate chemistry and set-up and find a huge cross-section of people and the
uniting force is surfing. It was, for
me, this group of people that fit in so perfectly with this process that I was
using. Like, they were a tribe but I didn’t know anything – I didn’t even know that
surfing really had such a history!
The
“tintype” images that you produce require large, antique photographic equipment (although
not as antique as I originally thought) and an almost alchemic knowledge and
skill. What are the processes involved in making these
photographs?
Most people who shoot with wetplate, like
to use the actual period equipment and materials – it’s beautiful stuff, don’t
get me wrong, it’s just very limited and doesn’t really work for what I’m doing
here. I do use period lenses in some instances, but if I didn’t have a shutter on
my lens then I don’t think that I could make these pictures that I’ve been
making.
In terms of the process, which everybody
likes to put center-stage, is to me a little bit like pulling the rabbit out of
a hat. This trick that I could pull out, but to me the project is not so much
about the process, yet the process is the thing that pulls everybody in to the
project. So there’s a little bit of a
magician thing going on there.
So basically what it is, is a piece of
blackened metal that you pour this substance called collodion on. Collodion is gun cotton, ether and alcohol
combined with iodides and bromides to make it have tonalities. You pour this on the piece of blackened metal
and you sensitize it in a bath of silver nitrate and while it’s wet you take
the picture and while it’s wet you develop the picture and while it’s wet you
fix the picture (or you can just fix it later if you take it away wet and fix
it at your studio) and then it’s washed.
The whole thing has to stay wet from start to finish so that’s why my
dark box has to come with me to the beach and that’s why I have to haul around so
much crap!
First of all, wind is probably the biggest
factor. Wind is not your friend with wet
plate. It puts lines on your plate of
collodion and it dries your plate out and makes you a little crazy because of
everything blowing everywhere, so to me that’s the worst part. Working on the sand is really not so bad –
having your office be on the beach everyday and shooting is really the best
part, it’s just that you often have to carry your gear over a lot of territory,
then it’s hard work.
Recent
images that you made in California (Horse-mounted ranchers carrying surfboards, and the
Malloy brothers with their outrigger canoe for example) bring to mind a
“pioneering” aesthetic similar to historic
civil war era photographs. Has this been
a conscious decision or do you think it is an unavoidable link because of the
tin–type process?
That’s a really good question! I would like to say that I was channeling
Timothy O’Sullivan and all of those forefathers when I made those pictures, but
I don’t really know. When I’m in places
like that, I try and feel around the landscape and connect to certain parts of
it. When I was photographing the Malloys with their big red plastic canoe, it
looked at first a little ridiculous in the landscape. However, when I pulled
the plate, the colour of the canoe went dark and the green landscape was kind
of misty and so it looked strangely like they were in Asia somewhere! It suddenly went from being California to
Asia and, I don’t know, it just had this very out of time feel that I though
was really quite amazing. And it was
like 40-second exposure – it was a really long exposure, it was really quite dark
out.
When I first met Chris he told me about it
and he wanted to have a picture with his brothers with it, and we thought about
all these places to take it, but it was really like the back yard was the best
spot because that’s really where it lives until it goes somewhere for real.
Have
you travelled specifically to shoot work for this series or has it been a sideline
series?
Oh no, you have to travel specifically;
there’s no sideline. This work is all
about planning and preparation, and in order to go somewhere you need to source
your chemistry, you need to source out all of the stuff that makes “your” kit
and for me my kit is very specific now.
You know, I went to Australia and had to figure it all out there, and it
takes time to figure it out. You have to
be somewhere a while, you can’t just “pop-in” and make it happen, at least I
can’t! It takes a lot of prep – even
just finding distilled water here was a pain!
If I’d known then I would’ve ordered it in advance.
How
do you select your subjects?
Sometimes they select me!
Explain
how you have come to photograph some of the most famous names in surfing?
Well, they all showed up in different
ways. I have a friend in New York who
introduced me to Kassia Meador and I took her picture in New York but I didn’t
think that it was good enough, so when I went to California I got in touch with
her and told her I’d love to shoot with her again. She said, “Ok, why don’t you meet me at
Donald Takayama’s shop, so we met there and Donald also came out for his picture
and it was just one of those incredible days.
I just loved photographing him; he was so much fun and a real
sweetheart. I feel really honored that I
got to take his picture, particularly since he died so soon afterwards, he was
too young for that.
He
struck a very classic pose as well.
He posed purposefully, that ‘first surfer’
photograph that struck me, also captivated him, he really wanted to embody that
pose. So that’s how I got to photograph
him. When I was in Australia I was at a
gallery opening and I met Dave Rasta and his American girlfriend, and they
invited me out to their farm and that’s how I photographed him. Not to forget
that his girlfriend, Lauren gave me my first surf lesson. I photographed John
John and Jordy for O’Neill, and after the job I snapped off one of my own!
There are some people that I’ve sought after
who are really big. I photographed Robert
August and Wingnut from Endless Summer. I recently met some amazing shapers in
San Deigo, Jon Wegener and Rusty Priesendorfer. I met Tom Curren in California
but the shot didn’t come out well, but then I met him again the next time and
we did another shot and got to hang out a little bit. I might be able to take a decent picture of
him now that he’s more comfortable with me but he’s not somebody that is
comfortable having his photograph taken.
What
is the most rewarding thing about this body of work?
I think that the most rewarding thing
is…it’s like the day in Santa Barbara when I was shooting this guy I’d never
met before on this ranch that I had never been to before with this group of
people who I had no idea who they were, and there’s a kind of choreography that happens, a kind of flow of
events that takes place while you’re shooting that leads to endlessly amazing
pictures and at one point they guy that I was photographing said to me, “I
don’t know if you noticed, but I think that we made a little bit of magic
today,” and, we did. It happened the
other day at Towan too. It’s just a
series of people come in and things just flow – you move over here and you move
over there and at the end of the day there’s this incredible feeling coupled
with good pictures. So whatever that is
that I just described, I think is the best part of it. You can meet people that you’ve never met
before, make a little magic with them that’s called a photograph and everybody
is just so happy.
Do
you have a favorite image? Why?
I do, I have a bunch. Some are different than others. I photographed Izzy and Lucy Kirkland and also
Lucy Thorman the other day. They were up against these rocks and they just, I
don’t know, there’s something about this picture. It doesn’t look like any other picture I’ve
ever taken. It’s these two women who are
caught in time; I don’t know how to describe it. It kind of kills me. Sometimes there are expressions – if you look
at Izzy’s eyes, she has super light blue eyes and they went white, so it’s
freaky the way that she looks and yet there’s a softness and it looks like if
Woodstock were on a beach in 2014 this would be it. They look like free spirits.
Where
do you see this project going – will it be an ongoing documentary or does it
have an end point?
It probably does have an end point, but
it’s not yet. I thought I was done with
it – I used to tell everyone that not only am I done with this but also I’m
done with collodion! You have a very short
collodion life because it beats you up.
But I might have a gig in South Africa and I might do a trip to Hawaii,
and I think that if I went to those two places and maybe the North of Spain,
south of Biarritz, maybe somewhere like that, then it could really be an
important document, if I could make it broader.
I don’t know if it has an end, it probably does.
Are
you tempted to capture Surfers now on different, more modern equipment or using colour
photography techniques, or do you think that would spoil your relationship with
photographing surfers?
I’ve started to shoot them using film as well;
I don’t think that it just has to be collodion.
I mean I don’t know if the film will end up being fabulous in the same
way that the collodion is, but I love shooting film and it’s nice to be able to
make prints.
Joni’s new book, Surf Site Tin Type is
published by Damiani Editore and is available to purchase here.
