Today we’d like to introduce you to Myron Hensel. They and their team shared their story with us below:
Myron Hensel is an artist based in Las Vegas specializing in wet collodion, film photography, and alternative printing processes that stem from the Victorian era. There is much to be said about the tangibility of the older processes in the digital era we live in.
He slowly fell in love with southwest scenery after moving to Las Vegas from Hawaii at the age of ten. He admires the warmth and vastness of the landscape and looks to connect farther with nature through the lens of a camera.
His love for photography developed from a trip to Japan in 2007. It continued after he spent some time in front of the camera while working in New York City. He later started doing street photography in New York and found himself capturing the beauty of the everyday.
Today, he enjoys multiple disciplines of photography, which he carries out in his downtown Las Vegas studio and surrounding landscapes. I also have a short 1-minute video about the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZBuExoxm3.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Balancing photography as work and photography as pleasure can be a tricky thing. I would say corporate gigs and weddings would be more of my regular job and the studio portraiture with the older processes and landscape photography is my actual art.
The wet collodion process I do can be quite challenging since I have to develop the image within minutes. It’s not like a film where you can send it off to a lab a month later and have the negative developed.
The wonderful thing about this process is that everyone I photograph gets to see the image change from a negative to a positive so they’re not just getting a portrait but also an experience.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I tend to be known for my black and white studio portraits that I create in my downtown Las Vegas studio. That would be the wet collodion photographic process that predates film by several decades.
It does require some chemistry knowledge and working with large format cameras under the dark cloth. I love the approach a large format camera offers to the artist as it is a camera that must be used on a tripod. It has a lot of limitations in some ways but those limitations can help you focus on creating.
What I really love about the older processes is that you get something physical and tangible. You are literally creating an heirloom that can get handed down through generations.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you, or support you?
I can be contacted through my website (www.myronhensel.com) or my Instagram @myron_hensel.
If my work speaks to you I think it would be thoughtful to share it with a friend who you think may also enjoy my work.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.myronhensel.com
- Instagram: @myron_hensel
