CLEVELAND, OH.- Photographs inspired by the “forgotten, discarded, decaying, overlooked, and ignored” aren’t typically the stuff for the walls of an art gallery showing.

With his 19th Century medium of wet plate collodion, that’s exactly what Cleveland artist and photographer Greg Martin is going for. He’s won multiple awards and accolades for his antiquated photographic process since graduating from CIA’s Industrial Design program in 1989.

Persistence of Vision: The Work of Greg Martin — a spectacular collection of wet plate photographs — runs at the Cleveland Print Room from Jan. 15 through Feb. 27. In this new work Martin is pushing the boundaries of this 19th century process and using it to explore 21st century themes of disconnection, alienation, and distancing effects brought on by digital technology.

Martin is no stranger to the Cleveland Print Room. He’s an original member of CPR’s advisory board and has hosted several demonstrations of the collodion process as well as wet plate portrait sessions.

“Describing the wet plate collodion process and its inherent challenges most often elicits curious and confused looks, and quite often a puzzled ‘why would you want to do this?’ and ‘what’s wrong with a digital photo?’” Martin noted.

“My answer is simple: Within this archaic, long-ignored, frustrating process I have found a method of creation that is continuously challenging, constantly inspiring, and profoundly rewarding.”

Artist's Statement
In this body of work I explore the perception, reality, and clarity of identity as it relates to society’s increasing focus on engagement through social networking and online relationships.

The meteoric rise in social networking has created the perception of closeness and knowing, while in reality having the opposite effect. Individuals work hard to present themselves, their lives, and their interests in carefully curated “bits” of digital text and imagery. We continuously consume this information and become convinced that we know someone through these digital interactions…who they are, their likes/dislikes, the arc of their lives. In reality if we were to look more closely we would realize how little is being revealed. Our mind has filled in the empty spaces and reconstructed the movements of individual lives as they exist in the virtual world. This illusion of connection along with the lack of true connection has in many ways made us less comfortable relating face-to-face.

By physically constructing barriers, and placing them into the camera, I have directly altered the visual information reaching the image surface. Introducing a variety of these "screens" has sculpted the image captured by the lens into something both familiar and disconnected. I constructed the work here with these varying layers of imagery on aluminum and clear glass, allowing the exposed surface silver, the glass transparency, and the material surface reflectivity to work together to both obscure and define the subject. Introducing the electric blue surfaces creates an unexpected visual interruption from the black and white, and is visual link to both digital imagery (computer screens) and early analog imagery (cyanotypes).

The advent of wet plate collodion photography in the mid-1800’s provided for the first time in history an affordable way for the masses to carry with them a substitution for the face-to-face physicality of being together. Cased tintypes and ambrotypes were carried by the millions providing a constant connection that could be referenced anytime. In essence becoming a miniature portable link to family members and loved ones.

Wet plate collodion is one of the highest resolution photographic processes ever invented…far higher resolution than digital or film. Yet it also has unique visual and physical attributes that continually show the hand of the maker and the limitations of the technology. It eschews digital sheen, and repeatability. Collodion is a direct positive process. The image plates in front of you are the ones that were exposed in-camera. These images hold within them the same light that defined the subject when they were taken. There are no layers of distancing between the original subject and the final collodion image.

----“ persistence of vision…” Greg Martin 2016