"chemical bath" artists: Toralf Sümmchen

mornin'

today, three days before the opening of "chemical bath", we'd like to introduce the artist whose photo you can see in the exhibition poster.  

Toralf Sümmchen is a German architect and artist based in Brooklyn who rediscovered film photography a few years ago. In his work, Toralf uses and experiments with a variety of analogue processes and camera formats, from 35mm through medium to large format and working with polaroids, 35mm & 120 film and wet plate collodion (tintypes and ambrotypes). 

  

Toralf's images cover a vast array of subjects, from still lifes and city life to portraiture. What links them is a watchful and subtle perspective on light and shade and the details brought out or obscured by it. Toralf's photographs have a quiet, sometimes meditative quality, capturing moments of stillness and peacefulness; be it in empty, but not unwelcoming urban spaces, interiors (usually shot looking out, towards the light) or the faces of his subjects.

As Toralf says, his "main interest lies the stories that these spaces, objects and subjects have to tell in their mostly overlooked small details".

You can find Toralf's work on his blog, page and Facebook.

You can also read more about tintypes, ambrotypes and other traditional and alternative processes on the Alternative Photography's page.