Old wooden cameras are big and cumbersome and must be towed on heavy tripods. The cameras Ian Ruhter uses are even bigger and more cumbersome. He built an extraordinary camera truck and even turned a house into a camera annexe dark room. The giant ambrotype and tintype plates have unsurpassed magic, but that is not the main asset of his work. The images, unique as paintings, tell intimate stories of his passionate response to nature and the different sides of the American dream. “I am not looking for gold, but the riches are within my heart and journey.”

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After a successful career in commercial photography that, in the end, appeared not to be satisfactory and motivated by a strong need for tactility and a wish to communicate on a deeper level, Ian Ruhter started to work with 19th-century techniques. He now works with wet collodion, tintype, and silver-based paper used as negatives. “I like to touch and feel things and use my hands. The collodion process allows me to work as a painter. Speaking the language of the image gives me a voice, my voice.”

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‍The camera truck 

The wooden 19th-century cameras are known for their massive sizes, which was necessary because the size of the plates had to be big enough to see them correctly. Ian Ruhter stretched the nominal dimensions of 8”x10” and even 20”x24”. Being impressed by the enormous details, the structure, and the magic of the wet plates, he wanted a bigger size for the ultimate tintype photograph of Yosemite. With great audacity and perseverance, he decided to build a giant camera in a truck, so he could drive the camera to where it was needed, creating plates of the enormous size of 24”x 35” (61 x 89 cm) to 48” x 60” (122 x 152 cm). Ruhter explains his initial awe and decision: “When you hold the plates with the silver layer on top in your hands, they almost look three-dimensional. My first reaction was: I want to see them bigger. I made up my mind and came up with the idea of building a big camera in a truck. There is another part to it that I did not discover until later. I have a visual condition in that I see the world upside down. The camera is so big that I work inside it, where you see the flipped projected world as ordinary again. So, I built a space where the world is visually perfectly projected for me. When I discovered that, I was blown away.” 

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But because of those limitations, I found new spots and ways of seeing it.

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Ian Ruhter often drove his camera truck to Yosemite National Park, where he produced life-size images of the rock El Capitan, made famous by Ansel Adams. “The truck is incredibly limiting. But those limitations also provide opportunities, forcing you to look at things differently. Normally, I would stand where Ansel Adams stood or Carleton Watkins walked. But because of those limitations, I found new spots and ways of seeing it. I use that to create different views of the same things that have been photographed millions and millions of times.”  

In the parking places, tourists are taking similar shots with their iPads. Then, they turn around, take a selfie and leave again. “They never sit down and just let it soak in. My process takes hours and hours to make one plate. So, you sit there and become more in tune with the environment. I love the slowing down process of it. I used to do commercial photography, but I was never the type who would shoot hundreds and hundreds of pictures.”

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I could validate his life and say: yes, you do matter!

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Obscura 

Later Ruhter managed to exceed the massive size of his truck camera by converting a house into a camera. The conversion resulted in an ambrotype plate with an incredible size of 66” x 90” (168 x 229 cm), recognised as the world's largest ambrotype. In the series Obscura, he photographed people living on the margin of society in alternative living conditions. There, he met Ted, a 97-year-old resident in the community of Bombay Beach at the Salton Sea, California, who became homeless after Susie, a friend he lived with, died, and her family claimed their house. It took him a month to prepare an abandoned house to make a single photo. With the giant ambrotype plate, Ruhter made a portrait of Ted sitting on a chair under a tree just before the house. To focus, he had to slide the plate to and fro. “I knew there was an enormous responsibility for me to do this because it is the biggest wet plate on earth. Photographing Ted had a deep meaning for me. I wanted him to be the subject because he became homeless in his old age. Herewith, I could validate his life and say: yes, you do matter!”

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Obscura shows people living in poverty, far away from the jet set in Los Angeles. We see ambrotypes of a man holding the bible and people living in caravans and trailers. “From our perspective, we perceive that they're living in poverty. But I've spoken to many people, and from their perspective, they're living life the way they want. They're not attached to material things and society. Somehow, I yearn for that as well. They're not connected to credit cards. There's beauty and dignity about that. Maybe they're living better than I do.” 
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Dead Sea Scrolls 

A different kind of work is the series Dead Sea Scrolls, made near the Salton Sea and in the nearby Slab City, a community of people living off the grid. The plates, made with silver-based photographic paper, measuring 30” x 60”, have metaphorical titles such as Bomb Shelter, Angel and Salvation. The expressive images, all presented as negatives, are chemically treated, yielding stripes, cracks, and bubbles on the surface. Does Ruhter play here with reference to the biblical books? “There's a small reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls. I shot at a Sultan Sea, which is dying. There is also a picture in Slab City where you see a bunch of trailers. That's how people live. I took the developer, and I started smashing it down. I used chemistry like it was paint. I was creating splashed-like bomb explosions because, in the 1940s, this was a military base. So, there are hidden messages in these photos. Together with Obscura, it is one of my favourite projects.” 

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Inadvertently, it does speak to politics. That's the beauty and power of photography.

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The photographs might be seen as parodies of America, as warming of climate crises, or even as political statements, but Ruhter avoids single interpretations. “These settlements once thrived, but the houses have been abandoned because of the drought of the Salton Sea. When the environment falls, it creates an unhealthy living space that affects people's health and mental stability. Inadvertently, it does speak to politics. That's the beauty and power of photography. When done right, it can change and mould a person's mind. I intend to spark something in the spectators’ brains and get their wheels turning, get them thinking, and going deeper than the photograph's face.”
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American Dream 

Another project, American Dream, shows homeless people in the streets of Los Angeles, for which Ian Ruhter didn’t have to go far. It is one of his earliest projects which spontaneously came up. “When I started making wet plates, I was doing commercial photography, and I lived in a two-story penthouse in downtown Los Angeles. Hundreds of people would line up on the streets and be sleeping on the streets at night. So, I was learning that poverty lines also go vertical. That's part of the ‘American Dream’ concept. When I taught myself to work with wet plate photography, I took my camera downstairs onto the street in Skid Row. I started meeting people, and they became my friends. So I fell in love with the wet-plate process, understanding that I could give these people a voice. I wanted to build a massive camera. I quit all my jobs, gave up that luxurious life, and went to live in Lake Tahoe.” 

Ian Ruhter returned to Skid Row with his camera truck and started photographing in his old Los Angeles area. “The American Dream project is about the question: what is the American Dream? Is it the penthouse with all the nice stuff and cars, or is it doing what you love? That's why I gravitate to the people in Slab City and Bombay Beach because they're just living life the way they see fit. And it isn't based on money in that there's a part of me that likes that thought and appreciates it.”
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Color Field 

A recent project Color Field consists of negative paper photos coloured with ink, a process adapted to express more emotion in black and white pictures. “I was paying homage to the abstract work of Mark Rothko. When I saw those large paintings in museums, they almost overtook me with a strong emotional impact. Of course, I didn't want to copy Rothko’s work, but I wanted to make a literal interpretation of a colour field, like a literal field or land mass, and then apply the same concept to it.” 

In his youth in Lake Tahoe, Ian Ruthe has memories of giant mountains, huge trees, and massive bodies of water. They became connected to his life and emotions. “When I look at nature, I look at it very differently. I am not a visitor; I am from here. I am part of it. My bad and my good days are intertwined with the same views I made the photos of. And each of those views has a feeling, and the colours represent different feelings. The lake up here is one of the largest alpine lakes in the world.” 
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Alchemist 

Landscapes and portraits are intermingled and interconnected in the works of Ian Ruhter. They are not treated with different approaches but are both forms of self-portraits, echoing his inner voice. “I treat a landscape exactly like a portrait. I look at nature as a portrait in itself. I don't see a difference because it also speaks to me in a different context.”

Working with the fundamental chemical processes of photography, Ruhter calls himself an alchemist. He does not refer to the material alchemist, working with metals to obtain gold, but to the spiritual side of it, described in the novel The Alchemist of Paulo Coelho. “The main character sets out on a journey, looking for gold, but he finds out that the answers are spiritual, and the alchemy is finding your true path in life. So that's the type of alchemy I am referring to. I am not looking for gold, but the riches are within my heart and journey. In the book is said: When you want something, the entire universe conspires to help you achieve it."

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Ian Ruhter is a fine art photographer, making portraits and exploring the landscape using the wet plate collodion process, who has become internationally known for creating the world's largest photographs with this historical medium.

https://www.ianruhter.com/

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