Good Chemistry

摘要

When Christie's held an auction of photographs from the collection of Elton John this October, four lots of pictures seemed strangely out of step with the rest. Though taken in the 1990s, they looked vaguely 19th century. In one bright-blue photo a platter of strawberries lies on a white plate next to four delicate wineglasses. Soft and painterly, the image is peaceful, haunting—like a frame from a dream. Buyers were eager to possess these unusual pictures by 44-year-old American photographer John Dugdale. They brought in $30,832. There's a reason Dugdale's photographs appear to be relics of an earlier age. He makes them using a century-old Deardorff studio view camera and a simple printing technique invented by photography pioneer Sir John Herschel in 1842 called the cyanotype process (see box, p. 172), which creates what look like black-and-white photos tinted blue.