SurfLand By Joni Sternbach

Joni Sternbach (b. 1953, United States) graduated from the School Visual Arts with a BFA in photography and completed her Master Arts degree at New York University and the International Center Photography in 1987. She has taught for many years and is currently a faculty member at ICP teaching wet plate collodion. Sternbach’s solo museum exhibition SurfLand opened at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA in May, capturing portraits surfers in tintype. SurfLand was recently at the String Room Gallery at Wells College in Aurora, NY and will also be at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR in November 2009 . Her first monograph SurfLand was published by photolucida.
Tintype, also melainotype and ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a sheet iron metal that is blackened by painting, laquering or enamelling and is used as a support for a collodion photographic emulsion.
Photographers usually worked outside at fairs, carnivals etc. and as the support the tintype (there is no actual tin used) is resilient and does not need drying, instant photographs can be produced only a few minutes after taking the photograph.