Press
Naples News
“Amelie and Alchemy” is a documentary-style film about a chemist who wants to take a picture of his 4-year-old daughter, Amelie. He’s not interested in doing it in just any old way, though. He’s interested in doing it in an extremely old way. It’s a mid-19th century process known as wet plate collodion ambrotype. What that involves, basically, is taking a picture with a camera about the size of a 32-inch TV where the person being photographed can’t move for 15 seconds, or else the picture won’t come out properly.
While it’s a fascinating look at this lost art of photography, Amelie is the real star of the show. She’s cute as a button, and the fact that a 4-year-old can remain still for 15 seconds to have her picture taken is simply mind-blowing.
Santa Fe New Mexican
Luther is currently away at the Alternative Photographic Processes International Symposium in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Paul Weidemn did an article on him and briefly touched on my film Amelie and Alchemy. They also used the main photograph for the front page of their magazine, Pasatiempo.
In Amelie and Alchemy, a documentary short made by University of Southern California film student Konstantin Brazhnik, Gerlach discusses the process of photographing his young daughter, Amelie, with the big camera. “What I look for in other photographers’ work, as well as my own, is the poetry,” he says. “These images have a sorcery to them, much more than any other photographic process.