A lost artform: Why this Louisville artist is resurrecting tintype portraits in his studio

The mystery grows as we gaze at an old metal tintype portrait that’s well over 100 years old. Who was this person and what heartaches and loss did they endue to leave us with such a forlorn expression?

A photographic portrait is like a book jacket, giving only a hint of what’s inside. It’s a mystery and just a piece of the puzzle of the subject’s life.

In photography, everything old is new again, and there is not much older than the tintype, an old style of photograph that creates an image on a thin sheet of metal that has been coated with a dark lacquer or enamel. As digital advances have put a camera in everyone’s pocket, young artisans, like Rudy Salgado, are discovering the beauty and rich history of ancient photographic processes like tintype and bringing them back to life.

You may like:This Kentucky artist is a leading 'automaton.' See his sculptures come to life

Salgado, 40, owner of River City Tintype studio and Calliope Arts, 324 E College St., wasn’t expecting magic to happen when he took a course in darkroom photography as a Master of Fine Arts student in printmaking at the University of Iowa. But that’s exactly what he felt when that first image began to appear in a tray of photo developer.

Salgado, like many of us, fell in love with analog photography at that very moment.

The tintype, or emulsion plate photography, dates to the 1850s. Tintypes and ambrotypes, essentially metal or glass plates with a covering of a light-sensitive collodion solution, replaced the earliest photo process know as the daguerreotype, an early photographic process employing an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor.

In their day, tintypes brought faster speed and mobility to photography. The same wet-plate collodion process allowed Matthew Brady and his army of photographers to document the horrors of combat for the first time ever during the Civil War.

Because of the durability of a tintype, a photo of a loved one could survive shipment via the Pony Express and be carried with them, even during combat, without fear of damaging it.

“Imagine living in an era where you couldn’t dream of what Niagara Falls looked like, then your cousin mails you a photograph of it. It was the social media of the day,” Salgado says.

The popularity of tintypes lasted for only about 30 years, but the process and insights were passed down through the generations and the ingredients are still available today.

"I feel very fortunate to stumble on this process and fall in love with it and be able to make the same recipes that photographers in the 1800s were doing," he says. "It’s so exciting.”

Tintype isn't the only retro art form Salgado dabbles in. 

'Labor of love':Photographer turned picker finds treasure in Louisville's discarded items

“My whole life is so antiquated. I started making etchings that date to the 1400s. Then I started doing stone lithography which came about in the 1700s, so I’m slowly progressing," he says.

By the time he is 60, 20 years from now, he may even be using a digital camera.

Like Brady and other tin type photographers in their day, Salgado takes his camera on the road, making tintypes on location and at local events.

“I’m approaching this as an artist and embrace the role of a traveling itinerant tin typist, engaging the world that way. Historically, tin typists were considered artists because they were not making negatives, so they weren’t producing multiple copies," he says. "These portraits are one-of-a-kind images.”

Getting started involved a steep learning curve and led him to scour antique shops and eBay for old photo equipment.

“When I went to Chuck Rubin Antique Cameras, I didn’t know anything and I said, ‘guys I’m making tintypes,’ and they said, ‘you’re doing what?'" he says.

Salgado told them he needed a PC cable "but when I Google it, it only brings up computer info." 

You might be interested:Welcome to the Home for Wayward Babydolls, a creepy resting place for discarded toys

That's when they handed him a box to rummage through until he found what he needed.

Making tintypes also requires mixing chemicals that are as volatile as jet fuel and living with the smell of ether, an ingredient in the collodion used to develop the images.

“I like the interaction and I like that I can do a process that’s 170 years old," Salgado says. "We are building this whole experience, a community, that's my intention. It’s also about these amazing stories I hear about people’s tintypes of their families.”

Young adults are attracted to the coffee and cream-colored, 4-by-5-inch and 8-by-10-inch metal prints and often strike the same stiff poses and frozen expressions seen in ancient tintypes. The original poses were the result of the need to hold very still during a long exposure. Often a metal bracket was attached to the back of a subject’s head to hold them in place during a portrait session.

Because there is no negative, a tintype is a reversed or mirror image of the subject. Unlike a selfie, you see yourself as you do in your own reflection.

“Sometimes people have these really emotional responses to their portrait, which is such a treat and such an honor," Salgado says. "It feels awesome that I could make someone cry because they liked their photo so much.”

Salgado says a tintype portrait is as important today as in centuries past.

“These are heirlooms and they’ll last 170 years. They are made of real silver and are one-of-a-kind.”

Reach photographer Pat McDonogh at pmcdonogh@courier-journal.com

River City Tintype studio

WHAT: Artist Rudy Salgado the man behind River City Tintype studio. A tintype is an old style of photograph that creates an image on a thin sheet of metal that has been coated with a dark lacquer or enamel.

WHERE: 324 E College St.

COST: $60 for a 4-by 5-inch portrait session, $160 for an 8-by-10 inch portrait session

MORE INFORMATION: To arrange a tintype portrait session, visit rivercitytintype.com or contact Rudy at info@calliope-arts.com or at 530-828-9395.