AlternativePhotography.com: Neil Miller: Collodion, cyanotype, gum and vandykes

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Neil was born in 1958 in Rush Green, UK. His fascination with photography began in 1975 and continued throughout his time at London's Chelsea School of Art. After a variety of occupations including time spent as a designer, roadworker and running his own civil engineering company he returned to photography in 2001. At this time he became a subscriber to Judy Siegel's excellent "Post Factory Photography" magazine, and began to experiment with a number of old photographic processes. He uses suitably old cameras, an english-made Gandolfi being his favourite, to produce large format negatives for cyanotype, gum bichromate and vandyke prints, and an adapted 19th century plate camera to make wetplate collodion negatives and ambrotypes.

I prefer to see the hand of the artist in a work of art, not the cold precision of a machine without a soul

At this time Neil is working primarily with the collodion process to produce ambrotypes and negatives on plates of glass. As the process involves preparing the glass plates and light-sensitive collodion mixture to coat them with, along with compounding developers from raw chemicals there is plenty of scope for the 'hand of man' to become evident in the final product: a lot of early images have the photographers thumbprint in the corner where he held the plate! Far from viewing this as an imperfection, Neil sees it as transforming the image into something more valuable and meaningful.

Alternative Photography: Art and Artists, Edition I
A book of inspiration showing the work of 115 artists currently working in alternative processes.
Strongly recommended for inspiration

Neil Miller
Cyanotypes

Blue Lady 1 ©	Doll 1 ©	Scales ©
Gum bichromates and Vandykes

Kim © Gum bichromate	Rievaulx 2 © Vandyke
Wetplate collodion ambrotypes

Calla 3 ©	Corks ©	Vase ©
Wetplate collodion negatives

Passion Flower ©	Telephone 3 ©