In popular thinking an Alchemist is someone who believes they can turn lead into silver or gold. Yes, there were Alchemists in the olden days who tried to transmute metals. But a more fundamental concept of Alchemy involves the conversion of simple elemental forms in nature to more complex, and more valuable, forms; an Alchemist is one who converts elementals into higher forms.

So what does this have to do with the wet plate process? At its most basic wet plate converts random bits of silver into organized, recognizable and beautiful (we hope) images. An Alchemist takes a fleeting moment of time and captures it for eternity in a matrix of silver and wood and metal and glass.

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