Text by Lyle Rexer, April M. Watson, Chris Malloy, Johnny Abegg.
Surf Site Tin Type is an homage to a sport, a way of life, and a tribute to the people who practice it. Over the past decade Brooklyn-based photographer Joni Sternbach has traveled around the world, creating tintype portraits of contemporary surfers using the nineteenth-century wet-plate collodion process. Stunning in their detail, these one-of-a-kind images evoke the romance and adventure of surfing, and the bold individualism of the men and women who live to ride the waves. Working with a large-format camera and using hand-poured plates that are prepared and developed on location, Sternbach has profiled a fascinating range of surfers, both well known and unknown, on prized surfing beaches. Locations include Montauk and Malibu in the United States, Byron Bay in Australia and Cornwall in England. Typical surfing photographs are action shots, riding the mighty wave and in vivid color, whereas Sternbach turns to a historic technique to capture something essential and even primordial in the portraits and settings, recalling a tradition of nineteenth-century anthropological photography. Surf Site Tin Type features texts by noted photo critic and historian Lyle Rexer, curator April M. Watson, and Chris Malloy and Johnny Abegg, both well-known surfers and filmmakers.
Featured image is reproduced from Joni Sternbach: Surf Site Tin Type.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Tory Daily
The Editors
With its oversized dimensions, Surf Site Tin Type is probably better suited for a place of pride on your coffee table versus a day on the sand, but this book is a must for any and all beach lovers. It’s a beautiful ode to the surf life from photographer Joni Sternbach, who spent the past decade capturing portraits of contemporary surfers around the world. What makes this such a stunner is Sternbach’s use of tintypes — a 19th-century wet-plate, on-site form of photography — whose resulting patina adds a romance and artistry to her images; it’s a refreshing and welcome move in today’s digital quick-snapshot terrain.
Onwardphoto.org
Evan L.
In the wrong hands the length of the exposure and development process the relationship with the subject can turn tense, but here she maintains a graceful balance of trust that leads to gripping images. For this project the wet-plate process truly shines, conceptually as well as aesthetically.
The New York Times, Lens
Diane Cardwell
nostalgic and clear-eyed, romantic and dispassionate.
Yahoo News
Like surfing, Sternbach’s work is unique and performative. Her studio is the beach; her exposed tintype plates processed in a chemical “fixer” bath in daylight for all to see. Like individual wave rides, each of her images is enhanced by varying and unpredictable conditions.
"Olivia" is reproduced from Surf Site Tin Type, Joni Sternbach's book of tintype portraits of contemporary surfers using the nineteenth-century wet-plate collodion process. "The power of these pictures is after all romantic," noted photography curator and critic Lyle Rexer writes. "Duke Kahanamoku—the native Hawaiian waterman and Olympic swimming champion most responsible for heralding the sport outside Hawaii—preferred to make his own surfboards out of wood, joining land and water in a mystical material union. Similarly, Sternbach's tintypes bind the subjects to their environments through an intensely physical means of representation. The plates register atmospheric conditions, temperatures, sunlight; not just the visual evidence of individuals, conventional photography's sterile narrative of two dimensions in the real world. And if the tintypes evoke a past time, it is perhaps a time long before photography, when the sea had its own voice and the energy of mana animated all persons and places." continue to blog
Join photographer Joni Sternbach for talks, book parties and signings of her best-selling Damiani book, Surf Site Tin Type, on two consecutive Saturdays in Santa Cruz and Santa Monica. continue to blog
Thursday, July 16, Damiani launches Surf Site Tin Type, Joni Sternbach's new collection of tintype surf portraits, with a discussion and signing at Garnet Hill, Bridgehampton. Sternbach will appear in conversation with Donna Paul of Designer Previews. Join us from 5-7PM! continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 12 x 9.75 in. / 192 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 ISBN: 9788862083805 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 3/24/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Damiani. Text by Lyle Rexer, April M. Watson, Chris Malloy, Johnny Abegg.
Surf Site Tin Type is an homage to a sport, a way of life, and a tribute to the people who practice it. Over the past decade Brooklyn-based photographer Joni Sternbach has traveled around the world, creating tintype portraits of contemporary surfers using the nineteenth-century wet-plate collodion process. Stunning in their detail, these one-of-a-kind images evoke the romance and adventure of surfing, and the bold individualism of the men and women who live to ride the waves. Working with a large-format camera and using hand-poured plates that are prepared and developed on location, Sternbach has profiled a fascinating range of surfers, both well known and unknown, on prized surfing beaches. Locations include Montauk and Malibu in the United States, Byron Bay in Australia and Cornwall in England. Typical surfing photographs are action shots, riding the mighty wave and in vivid color, whereas Sternbach turns to a historic technique to capture something essential and even primordial in the portraits and settings, recalling a tradition of nineteenth-century anthropological photography. Surf Site Tin Type features texts by noted photo critic and historian Lyle Rexer, curator April M. Watson, and Chris Malloy and Johnny Abegg, both well-known surfers and filmmakers.
