Delhi-NCR artist Vibhav Kapoor makes wet-plate tintype portraits

Vibhav Kapoor makes portraits on metal plates at his Delhi-NCR studio. The artist and assistant professor at O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat uses tintype, a 19th-century process that produces a positive image directly on a dark plate.

Kapoor coats each plate with collodion, sensitises it in a silver-nitrate bath and exposes it through a large-format camera. He must develop and fix the plate while it is still wet, leaving no negative from which to make simple reprints. A finished image emerges in about 10 to 15 minutes.

The process asks sitters to hold still for eight to 10 seconds while the plate records light. Kapoor said the sitting involves the person presenting themselves for the camera.

Humidity can affect the chemistry, Kapoor said, while dust settling on the wet collodion layer can change how parts of an image develop. Tintypes were once valued as a relatively inexpensive and durable alternative to daguerreotypes.