Dan Estabrook
Still Life, 2005
Unique diptych of pencil on waxed calotype negative, and salt print
Ironically and frankly, what captured me most about this image wasn’t the content of the pictures itself, but instead, what Jerry Spagnoli said during the tour of the gallery that beautifully curated the works of various artists who created pieces of art using almost 200 years old techniques. At first glance, the works created by Dan Estabrook merely appeared as two different versions of the same picture. In my opinion, my initial reaction could be similar to what is shown indefinitely though digital resources. Like many others, I would not have known that this image isn’t at all what it is seemed until I was told otherwise. The digital images would not do the art piece itself or the artist’s purpose of his creation enough justice since digital images would not capture the artist’s intent until further background of the technique and artist is known. The image was something that I have seen before and I didn’t draw my attention back to Estabrook’s pieces until Spagnoli described the Calotype process and the twist that Estabrook cleverly applied to the salt printed piece.
The Calotype process is a technique that was usually an alternative to the daguerrotype printing; but instead of printing on glass or film, it is printed on a high quality piece of writing paper. The paper is brushed with silver nitrate then heated. Right before the image is captured, the paper is brushed with equal mixtures of silver nitrate and gallic acid. Then in a dark room, the camera is exposed to the subjects of the pictures for as long as it is needed. In order to make the image visible, it is again brushed with gallo-nitrate for development and with a finishing liquid to set the image into place.
A brownish-reddish image is shown above in the calotype image—but what I didn’t know until Spagnoli mentioned it was the fact that the two intersecting ropes shown in the immediate foreground of the image was actually hand drawn by Estabrook. So, when the image was later salt printed which is essentially equivalent to making a copy of an image, the salt printed image shows the subjects of the image which in this case the still life: fruits and a cup as well as the intersecting ropes as if they were both captured at the time.
Not only does Estabrook show incredible finesse in being able to completing alter the resulting salt printed image due to his immaculate drawing abilities but he shows innovative and artistic strengths by having the courage to bring contemporary techniques of physically altering images into collaboration with an 18th century technique.
I would also like to bring attention to the name of the art piece that Estabrook decided to pin onto with the piece: Still Life. The name of the piece contradicts with the content of the picture. Even though the image’s background does show an elusive image of a variation of still life: different fruits and a cup, the big and intersecting, criss crossed, X-marked demands the viewer of the image to focus on the ropes in the salted print image as opposed to the still life itself. Estabrook probably wanted his audience to learn more about the history of the calotype technique that he used which to me, which is what I find to be the most important unique aspect of the image.
