Amber Ascher’s Photographic Time Trip

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Photo courtesy of Amber Ascher

Amber Ascher - Photographer

Amber Ascher

All photographs freeze a moment in time. Yet the tintypes of Amber Ascher travel far beyond that trope. As the moment freezes, it unlocks a door, transporting you through time. You finally return from a trip into the 1800s. 

In the process, all the colors that tend to distract us from the essence of image and personhood fall away. We’re left with, in effect, a subject as imaginatively alive as those of, say Albrecht Durer, the Renaissance master of monochromatic graphic art, yet as vividly precise and evocative as the 19th century tintypes of Julia Margaret Cameron, whose portraits of such towering figures as Charles Darwin, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Alfred Lord Tennyson are considered definitive. 

Milwaukeean Ascher, still comparatively new to her craft, might understandably shrink from such comparisons. However, she says Cameron, one of the first women photographers to be taken seriously, was an early inspiration for her, thanks to a Milwaukee Art Museum show of Cameron’s work a few years back.

She also knows that Cameron was also derided for her more soft-focus, atmospheric portraits, which were simply too radical and innovative for the time. “But she exhibited internationally and published two books,” she says.

Artistic Motivation

Such a legacy by a great woman photographer feeds Ascher’s artistic motivation. Her talent, skill, and vision are evident. A chat with her can quickly delve deep into the abstruse, ancient technicalities of her art form, like a cobwebbed sorceress emerging, eyes aglow, from a mysterious darkroom cavern. And I’m not kidding about glowing eyes because tintype, aside from no color distractions, has a considerably higher pixel rate than digital photography. So, when Ascher’s camera focuses on a portrait sitter’s eyes they open so clearly as to be a short-cut, not just a window, into the subject’s soul. 

We’re speaking of the phenomenon of the experience in this time-transport, something which many observers, including the well-spoken Ascher, are reduced to calling “magic” as you witness your own exquisitely rendered image becoming a reality, like a blooming rose, sped up to a matter of seconds.

Technically called wet plate collodion process, it involves creating a direct positive image on a thin 5 by 7-inch metal rectangle, the so-called “tin” coated with a thin coating of lacquer or enamel to support the photographic emulsion. Most popular in the 1860s and 1870s, it was described as the first “truly democratic” medium for mass portraiture.

“People are really interested in the history of it,” Ascher explains. “Tintypes altered human history for all time, because it was the first type of photography that was accessible to the average person. Daguerreotypes preceded them but were expensive to print and were actually dangerous.”

Peculiarly Uncanny

So, after she takes out her image, she must develop it in a solution and, tipping it forward and backward in a small dish, as the subject watches her, the gentle wave effect produces a positive image in a matter of seconds, right before your eyes. Abracadabra!

Because it’s not a negative, the image is a reverse of its subject matter. So, your mole, or the crook in your smile, is on the other side of your face. That peculiar uncanniness too can send you into a bit of Alice-in-Wonderland tizzy. Ascher can make reproductions by scanning her prints, but nothing beats the vividness of the original. So, some people have a bit of breath stolen at that “magic” moment.

The photographer felt she should try the technique when, one day at The Pfister Hotel, she saw the work of Margaret Muza, who may be the only other person doing tin types in Milwaukee. “I was struck by the way the tintypes capture something below the surface level,” Ascher says.

Pop-up Sessions

But Muza does mostly work in her home whereas Ascher is seemingly everywhere lately, doing pop-up photo sessions at art fairs, and social gathering places like The Daily Bird coffeeshop, Amorphic Beer, Riverwest24, or the hugely successful Blueberry Festival (co-sponsored by The Polish Flat collectibles shop and Seven Swans restaurant), a gathering of largely younger artists and makers, where crowds clamored for Ascher’s work, and gave her a serious workout.

Those locales—as well as The Riverwest Farmer’s Market, where she sets up twice a month—are all venues in her own Riverwest neighborhood (Full disclosure, Ascher is a neighbor of this writer). But she’s ventured further to Bay View, the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, and even The Driftless region, where she did a successful pop-up event outside of Driftless Books in Verona. 

Yet, truth is, this is a demanding medium with her doing pop-up darkroom chemistry in a self-contained tent-like enclosure. Then she emerges from behind the curtain like the Wizard of Oz, to dazzle her customers with the actual final liquid development. Except she’s not a duplicitous sort, like the daffy old wizard. 

Soft, Swirling Edges

This photography requires a large, heavy camera, a 95-year-old Eastman Kodak 2-D. Its cooling bellows are wearing out. So she also newly purchased an Agfa camera, and an antique brass Petzval lens, which “produces a sharp center with a soft, swirling out of focus edges.” Set up on a tripod, this camera demands conditions like very little sunlight and not excessive heat. So maybe the summer pop-ups are a bit like a salmon swimming upstream. But what a swimmer. 

In fact, Ascher’s now looking hard to find a studio space she can afford. Something about the size of a bedroom or small kitchen and preferably with a walk-in closet space she can use as a darkroom. She quit a bartending job at Black Husky Brewing and, more recently, a few other side gigs to pursue photography full time. 

Ascher took the initial dive into this art form after several desk jobs simply stifled her creative spirit. She admits to some ADHD and even autism, or what’s now diagnosed as “neurodivergent,” so this is the sort of outlet she needed. “(Her diagnosis) shaped the path I’m on because of finding that out.”  Other factors along the path were frequent solitary camping trips, and self-realizations arising from a period of studying on a yoga teaching program.

She also took a workshop with East Coast tintype master John Coffer. “So, I started on this journey to find what would be in line with my natural tendencies. It was honoring my soul’s calling.”