1st Annual European Collodion Festival & Bièvre Photo Fair 2009

Amazing, and very fun! I’m gob smacked! Paris was magnificent!

I’ll start by thanking everyone that made the journey for the 1^st Annual European Collodion Festival:

Carl and Liz from Glasgow, Scotland
Rebecca and Marti from Barcelona, Spain
Alexei from St. Petersburg, Russia
Dmitry, and Tamara from Moscow, Russia
Stefan and Mario from Vienna, Austria
Indra and Bart from Maastricht, The Netherlands
Eddie from New York, USA

There were my regular photo friends there from Brussels, Gent and Paris. I made some new friends, too. I met Vincent earlier in the day. He’s from Paris and was very interested in getting started in the Wet Plate Collodion process and Joe (an American) that’s been living in Paris for 20 years or so. What a great group of people! I’m honored to know each one.

We arrived in Saclay, France (hotel) Friday afternoon. About 1PM. Carl and Liz had a bump and got stuck on a train and a train station and didn’t get to the hotel until after 4PM. We decided to go into Paris even though it was later than we had planned. After a “sardine in an oven” like ride on the train, we got to where we could jump on the Metro and ended up at the Eiffel Tower at about 7:15PM. We had a dinner date at Martin Becka’s house at 8PM, so we only hung out at the tower for a little while. We jumped into a taxi and headed to Martin’s house. 

It was a lovely evening talking, laughing, eating, drinking and looking at Martin’s new project; cityscapes of Dubai – 16”x20” paper negatives (Calotypes) printed onto an Albumen-like paper – wow! These things were amazing! Martin is a great guy and a wonderful artist/photographer. His wife, Sophie, made us a delicious French meal of beef, vegetables, potatoes, ice cream/fruit, bread, and the cheese! OMG, makes my mouth water thinking about the cheese. Oh, and yes, we drank a few bottles of wine – I counted seven or eight – maybe more. They know how to live – are you listening my American brothers and sisters?

Saturday we slept in. In the early afternoon, we met a lot of the group for lunch in Bièvre. The shopping and consuming of large brass lenses and old wooden cameras started early on Saturday. There was quite a bit of good Wet Plate Collodion stuff, but I really didn’t have time to shop and negotiate with the sellers. I did see some nice stuff though. After lunch we found my booths and started setting up. We used one side for an exhibition space and the other side for the “Collodion Performance” (making plates). In a perfect world, we could have been a bit more  organized – timetables, literature in French (oops) and a tad bit more space. We’re sorting things out for next year – it will be spot on! We had work out Saturday for people to look at and we just kind of relaxed and talked. We had a nice meal and some drinks and headed back to the room for an early Sunday morning.

At 7AM Sunday (Sunday Morning Coming Down), we arrived with the Toyota loaded with camera, dark-box, chemicals, plates, head-brace, etc. to unload at the booths. The only people there were Carl, Liz, Jeanne, Summer and I. We unloaded and setup everything. We were making plates by 9AM. As the light changed throughout the day, it was quite easy to adjust exposure and bounce the light a little bit. I’m not sure how many plates I made, but several of them were taken away and I have 12 plates at home (to be varnished and sent to the sitters). So, I’m guessing close to 20, maybe even more. It was a lot of fun, but like I said, some better organization would help a lot. I have two images that I kept for my collection. These are posted here.

Around noon, Laura (event organizer) came by and said that I had been awarded something and I needed to meet near the county building at 12:30PM. Carl took over the booth with Summer and Liz. Jeanne and I headed to the award ceremony. They gave out about 5 awards and then I heard my name and went up and they gave me a medal, a certificate that says, “Grand Prix de Bièvre”, two wonderful photography books, a tripod, camera bag, etc, etc. a lot of stuff! It was very nice. At some point, I’m sure they will update their web site with the information, too. You can see a small video below – thanks Jeanne!

Along with the award, I was offered at least one exhibition (maybe two) and two workshops in Paris. And, I was offered an article in Photo magazine (Paris). Not to mention a nice spot at the fair next year, too – we’re looking forward to it!

Thanks again to everyone for making this a wonderful memorable event! Merci Beaucoup!

Post Script: I had one bad thing happen on the trip. I didn’t pack this image well enough and it fell out of the packing while we were walking into the hotel. It hit the ground and shattered – it kind of made me sick, but I got over it. I may glue it back together again. That’s what happens when you make photographs on glass, sometimes they break! 

I will post of the portraits I made tomorrow in a different blog.