18 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com
square format of the Hasselblad sim-
ply because, to me, everything seemed
equal. It wasn’t horizontal or vertical. I
fell in love with the democracy of that
format. In those days, I did everything
at ƒ/22 and often on a tripod. That in
itself dictates a certain kind of image.
Also, I wouldn’t photograph things
straight on...I'd tilt a little bit, or I
would shoot from an oblique angle.
I fell in love with Eugène Atget’s
work [because] he just couldn’t place
his camera in front of anything. It was
always at an oblique angle.
Atget didn’t necessarily think
he was doing something in an
artistic way...
There’s that very famous photo-
graph where he’s across the Seine
photographing Notre Dame with a
tree dissecting the frame. He was a
commercial photographer in com-
petition with other commercial
photographers in Paris, and every
one of them would go around to the
front of Notre Dame—as they
should—and do a very clean,
sellable photograph.
And he goes across the Seine,
gets an oblique angle, then bisects
it with this black tree. Of course,
every one of those other photo-
graphs is forgotten today.
He was self-taught. I don’t
know if that had anything to do
with it. It was like he was invent-
ing another language. That had a
huge effect on me.
What equipment are you
working these days?
I still use my Hasselblad, and I
still use film, but now I also use
a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. I just
make the viewfinder square by
changing the ratio. When you
download the files, you still see the
whole image, but what you com-
posed was square.
If I do commercial work, I vary
the lenses. But for my personal
work, I only use the lens, which
pretty much sees the way my eye
sees: the 80mm on the Hasselblad and
the 50mm f/1.2 on the Canon.
I don’t want to get away from film,
because it’s my history, but I think the
digital world is angels on the head of a
pin, completely miraculous.
Yesterday, I was out trying to find
a place called “The Devil’s Pocket,”
which I thought had an intriguing
name. I took the digital camera. Now
that I found it, I’m going to go back
and take the film camera. Sometimes
when I travel, I’ll just take the digital.
If I shoot color, I’ll use the digital.Are you still making traditional
prints in a darkroom?
I do use Ilford papers, but I also make
pigment prints on , with a Canon
printer. I also do wet-plate collodion
with an 8x10 Deardorff and an 1870s
Petzval lens. It’s an 1860s process. It
has an ISO of 1. It’s a mixture of ether,
alcohol and guncotton.
Generally, you make a plate, a tin-
type or a glass plate. A glass plate is anambrotype, a tintype is on metal.
I only do it occasionally. The expo-
sures are generally from about 6 to
15 seconds. When you do a portrait,
people have to have a brace or lean
up against something. There are no
cheesy smiles.
They have to stand there and look
at the ends of the earth. It’s a look
that you don’t get anywhere else in
terms of the process. I’m also real
fond of the aberrations. It’s hard to
make one really perfect. Back in the
1860s, they took such pains to make
great plates. We go the other way
now to make them look full of aber-
rations. As I said, I try and guard
against perfection.
In my workshops, I emphasize that
if you want to really get good, learn
the history of our medium. Learn
what came before us. We stand on the
shoulders of giants. DPPFor more on Keith Carter’s work, go to
keithcarterphotographs.com.“Fireflies,” 1992