Large-format portrait

A 19th-century camera

At Cameras & Films — the space that was the Lomography Embassy Barcelona, where Joan Linux has been teaching workshops since 2011 — there is a camera from the late 19th century. It’s not a museum piece. It works.

In this workshop we use this camera to make portraits. The exposure is made not onto film but directly onto photosensitive paper, which is developed immediately. The result is a unique, unrepeatable positive that condenses a hundred and fifty years of photographic history into a single session.

This isn’t a nostalgia workshop. It’s a way of touching the origins of the medium to better understand where we are today.

Key contents

• Brief context: portrait photography in the 19th century and its processes
• The large-format camera: how it works and how it differs from modern formats
• Preparing the photosensitive paper: emulsion and sensitivity
• The portrait session: light, positioning and exposure time
• Paper development and reading the result
• The direct positive: uniqueness and materiality of the image

What’s included

• Use of the 19th-century large-format camera
• Photosensitive paper and chemicals
• Space and equipment at Cameras & Films

What to bring

• Nothing. The workshop takes place entirely at Cameras & Films (c/ Tallers, Barcelona).

Not included

• Additional prints on photosensitive paper (materials extra, enquire)
• Travel to Cameras & Films