Bergeners is a portrait study of the people of Bergen.
The portraits are made with the technique of wet plate collodion process which is one of the first photographic methods and, as named, it is worked on while wet. This takes ten to fifteen minutes from posing the model in front the large format camera, pouring the collodion emulsion on a glass plate, sensitizing it for three minutes in the silver bath, making the exposure, running to the darkroom, developing the plate and fixing it.
In such working conditions, the portrayed becomes part of the photographic experience, on both sides of the camera.
This historical process reveals the value of photography work more as a craft, even sometimes more like as in alchemy approach than as photography in common perception. The choice of crafting portraits with this kind of photography is about of trying to depict the inner landscape of the individual.
The act of doing portrait not only with the slow historical process but with large format camera is a quite rare event in our contemporaneity which evoke very particular psychological situation for every person that comes to collaborate for creating a wet plate collodion portrait.
The aim of this series is to present an archive of portraits that raises questions about our place as individuals in history and reveals haunting truths about the collective mentality and subconscious; at the same time, it addresses personal issues about the author's place in this particular society.
Fotografiens Hus 2018, Oslo, Norway
Høstutstillingen 2019 (National Art Exhibition in Norway)
International Meetings of Photography in Plovdiv - European capital of Culture, 2019
