The Laboratorium: A Brief History

Once upon a time in Rochester, NY, two lives intersected at the Visual Studies Workshop. Jenn Libby and Heather Wetzel met as grad students and came to realize they were kindred spirits who shared a love for things old and well-crafted. Both artists preferred making things with their hands, in ways that some people thought were inefficient (why not use a filter in Photoshop to make it look old), aesthetically displeasing (why would you want a photograph with imperfections), or impractical (why use wet-plate when it is so labor intensive and messy). Despite the naysayers, they pursued antiquated processes in their artmaking endeavors and continue to do so.

In 2005, they created the laboratorium to promote these processes. They rented studio space at VSW, spruced it up, and started promoting ambrotype portraits. Their first customers were a group of students from the Photographic Preservation and Collection Management program at Ryerson University and George Eastman House. These were people who knew what an ambrotype was and recognized a rare opportunity to be immortalized on glass.

Heather built ingenious portable darkrooms and the labortorium became mobile. One of their initial traveling portrait endeavors was the first Artist Row at the Rochester Public Market. In 2007 they traveled to Whitesburg, Kentucky to participate in the annual Seedtime on the Cumberland festival. Ambrotypes proved to be a hit with the bluegrass crowd and they worked non-stop making portraits that day.

the laboratorium's biggest accomplishment during it's brief existence was Past is Present – an exhibition of work by 43 artists who employed historic photographic processes. It was on view in the Aaron Siskind Gallery at the Visual Studies Workshop in the fall of 2006. Friend and fellow collodiac, Tammie Malarich, designed a fabulous, hand-bound catalog for the exhibition which sold out.

So there you have it. A history in a nutshell of the laboratorium. Now let's move on.

-JL