Phillip England creates unique, handmade, permanent photographs on metal using the authentic 19th century tintype process.
Tintypes, invented in the 1850s,
consist of a blackened metal plate
coated with photographic emulsion
that is exposed in the camera.
A tintype is a unique, permanent, single copy image on metal, involving no intermediate negative or digital file. There’s nothing else in photography quite like it.
Phillip England makes commissioned tintype portraits of individuals, families and people at special occasions, but his artistic practice also exploits the unpredictability and fragility of hand made, chemical process image making to draw attention to the physical photograph itself as much as to the photographic subject.
As tintypes require immediate processing after they are prepared he uses a travelling darkroom on location or subjects can come to his studio.
Phillip England is one of a very small number of collodion tintype practitioners in Australia and possibly the only full time practitioner in Tasmania.
Solo exhibitions by Phillip England at Salamanca Arts Centre include:
Paying Attention (2020)
Gazed upon Lake Pedder (2019)
Denizens (2018)
Ag / BLACK (2017)
Window to the Soul : Tintype Portrait of Tasmanians in the Arts (2017)
Air, Water, Earth (2016)
Recuperation (2015)
Image Credits:
Phillip England. Asta (2015). 5 x 7 inch tintype photograph.
Phillip England. Steve (2015). 5 x 7 inch tintype photograph.
Phillip England. White tulips, driftwood & desert sand (2016). 5 x 4 inch tintype photograph.