Many people still turn to the U.S. Mail for their communication needs, but perhaps none more so than John Coffer.
Coffer is a “wet-plate artist,” which means he uses a photographic technique that dates to the 1850s. He operates Camp Tintype in Dundee, NY, where people from around the world come to attend workshops and learn how to create these types of images.
Camp Tintype has a website — JohnCoffer.com — but no telephone. If you send an email, the webmaster will print it and mail it to the camp.
In other words: If you want to attend a workshop or ask Coffer a question, the most effective method is to write and mail him a letter.
In a written interview — conducted by mail, of course — Coffer explained that he prefers written correspondence because it attracts serious students.
“Only the most interested and thoughtful will take the time and effort to write,” he wrote. “I don’t care to deal with the frivolous. Just people who really want to learn and do the process.”
Coffer’s approach is unique, but it works. Since he moved to New York in 1985, he has become one of the world’s most prominent wet-plate artists.
Coffer has been interviewed by People, the Los Angeles Times, NBC’s “Today” show and other media outlets, and he and his students have exhibited their artwork in galleries across the nation.
Through it all, he has helped preserve an art form that requires painstaking attention to detail.
Wet-plate photography requires a plate to be coated with a special solution and exposed in the camera while still wet.
In other words: Pictures aren’t shot and developed later. A wet-plate photographer essentially makes his own “film” and processes it on the spot.
The process was used widely during the Civil War.
“To me, wet plate artistry is just that — an ‘art’ with some science mixed in with it,” Coffer wrote. “It can be a beauty and it can be a beast. Always it is challenging with few guarantees. That keeps it interesting even after 42 years of making my living by it.”
Although Coffer relies on the mail, he is by no means a Luddite.
In addition to his website, he offers instructional DVDs and has published an e-book. He also is credited with producing the first “tintype movie,” and many of his students are combining wet-plate photography with digital forms.
But when it comes to communicating, Coffer believes nothing beats the mail.
“I am a bit of a romantic and letter writing is soundly in that genre,” he wrote.
