Sebastian Edge

Each picture I make takes time and is made almost entirely by my own hand, with my vision.

As long as I can remember, I have been around making and consruction, living in a small and isolated part of the Kent countryside, I occupied my time with making things that I had seen or read in books. from a replica of the Globe theatre to a tree house in the garden.

After many years of investigating the camera and its many facets and options of engineering, practical and impractical, I constructed the large camera, to make giant wet collodion negatives only to digitize them.

In January 2010, I moved into studio space at the old Tilling Stevens Bus Factory, now the Powerhub in Maidstone Kent and by April, I had finished construction of a studio and workspace with full darkroom facilities for hand photographic printing, something I prize in the finishing of my photographs.

I have begun taking a number of portrait commissions, but the people I am drawn towards making pictures of are often those with an interesting tale, or have a slightly sideways or long winded approach to living their lives. Like Lester the weatherman and shepherd in Kent, or Andrew Kotting the Artist filmmaker, whose life, his daughter and Klipity Klop all tangle together.

I begin with a conversation, as I travel. Which leads to an investigation, to form a social document and then the performative process of the day the darkvan comes to make their picture, it is at this juncture that something interesting happens, as I set the huge camera in place, and brew the chemistry, the sitter waits and watches. The giant camera and glass plate negative begins, its minute or so exposure. They hold still.. a few minutes later the image arrives and their image is seen for the first time on the giant piece of glass.