Martin Kurrein
Martin left school at 15 and worked for a living for the next 15 years before becoming a lawyer. Age 16, he bought his first proper camera, A Zeiss Contax III, from Dixon's of Slough paying them £1 a week for six months.
He created a studio and darkroom for large format photography as a retirement hobby, and then fell down the rabbit hole of wet plate photography, where he is very happy.
Artist Statement
Photographing using the wet plate collodion process is important to me because it yields a unique, original, physical object showing an image made of actual metallic silver. It preserves a fascinating and tactile historical craft, honours slow, deliberate image-making over instant gratification. It produces an unmistakable organic aesthetic that cannot be replicated digitally, and requires time, consideration and expertise. It is slow photography.