Showcase - Joni Sternbach

Joni Sternbach’s analogue photographic technique from the 1850s brings a timeless feel to a new series of surfer portraits

- Ashtyn Douglas

Kelly Slater stands in the backyard of his home on the North Shore of Oahu, holding perfectly still for the camera. He’s barefoot, wearing a pair of board shorts and is holding a big-wave gun upright behind him. At first glance, it seems like just another photo shoot for the most popular surfer in the world, but the photographic equipment situated in front of him isn’t exactly the high-tech digital gear you normally see surf photographers carting around.

Getting settled behind a tripod with a large, wooden field camera affixed to the top of it is Brooklyn-based photographer Joni Sternbach, who’s spent the past decade creating antique-looking, large-format portraits of contemporary surfers. Sternbach is one-part chemist, one-part photographer, using a process called wet-plate collodion—an early photographic technique from the 1850s— that makes modern subjects (like an 11-time World Champ holding high-tech Tomo gun) look like a historical figure from the Civil War era.