You may not want to party like it’s 1851, but thanks to one Lexington photographer, you can now have your picture taken just as people did back then.
Mark Cornelison, the University of Kentucky’s current chief photographer and a longtime former staff member at the Lexington Herald-Leader, recently opened a wet plate collodion, or tintype, photography studio.
Initially operating out of his garage, Cornelison moved to a small studio space at 522 W. Short St. in November. Since 2022, Cornelison Tintypes has produced more than 300 photographs in this vintage style. After covering 25 Kentucky Derbys, 15 Final Fours, and nine Super Bowls during more than 30 years as a professional photographer, Cornelison views his tintype work as a return to the fundamentals of the passion that has defined his life.
Mark Cornelison
Mark Cornelison in his studio at 522 W. Short St. His newly opened photography business specializes in wet plate collodion, also known as tintype, portraits.
“When I was with the paper, we had the best of everything,” recalls Cornelison. “It got to the point where I missed having to know how to do it all myself. Nowadays, so much of digital photography is automated to the point that anyone can be a great photographer, which can be good but also is less than ideal when you’re thrust into a problem-solving situation.”
On that note, there’s no more hands-on approach to photography than tintype. (And with toxic chemicals like mercury now removed from the process, it’s far less dangerous, too.)
Each metal plate must sit in silver nitrate before being put into a cartridge under red light and loaded into the camera, steps that Cornelison refers to as “a dance.” After he clicks the shutter, the plate goes back under the red light, where it is sprayed with a developing chemical and water.
Mark Cornelison
A tintype portrait of UK baseball catcher Devin Burkes captures minute details in a timeless fashion.
The resulting images depict every minute detail, from the number of eyelashes to the prominence of freckles, magnified in what Cornelison describes as “the most honest picture you’ll ever take.”
“Back then, when a photographer came to town, everything stopped because that was most people’s one and only chance to get photographed in their lives,” Cornelison says of the mid-nineteenth-century technology that tintype photography originates from. “That’s why everyone was gussied up in those pictures and took them so seriously. They didn’t know if they’d get the chance again and wanted to look their best.”
With each plated photo lasting more than 175 years, Cornelison hopes his work will help descendants connect to their ancestors and understand the people they come from. For that reason, he etches the back of each plate with the subject’s name, date, location, and slide number so that anyone, no matter how far removed, can identify the person.
“I have this vision of kids rummaging through their grandma’s trunk one day, finding a plate inside and seeing their great-great-grandpa on it for the first time,” Cornelison said. “My mom died recently and left us boxes of pictures, and I don’t know who half of [the people] are, so having something like this to connect those dots is special.”
Capturing these photos in Cornelison’s studio are two century-old cameras: a Century View No. 2 and a Deardorff folding view camera, both acquired through serendipitous circumstances.
The Century No. 2 was found collecting dust in a basement locally after being used inside Lexington’s famed LaFayette Studios decades earlier. It had a few missing parts, so Cornelison bought two similar cameras on eBay for replacements.
The Deardorff came from a friend Cornelison used to shoot the Kentucky Derby with. The friend’s late brother-in-law, an avid photographer, had owned the camera. Initially unable to find a buyer, the friend planned to put it out on the curb — until he noticed Cornelison’s work on Instagram. He reached out, and Cornelison drove to Chicago to pick it up.
Whether photographing stars like Rajon Rondo, Tubby Smith, Lee Keifer, and John Mellencamp, documenting a Kentucky Derby, or capturing tintypes in his downtown studio, Cornelison emphasizes that his work isn’t about having the most up-to-date equipment. Instead, it’s about building relationships with the people he photographs — no matter how brief the interaction — and capturing what happens during that time.
“Years ago [longtime National Geographic staffer and UK grad] Sam Abell told me that I was good at ‘the melt,’ meaning that you can cut through a subject’s awkwardness and nervousness to get a good picture. When you’re trying to get into somebody’s life for 60 seconds like that, you have to excel at quickly putting them at ease. Throughout my career, I’ve always strived to be known as the guy you’d most want to take your picture, and that’s no different with tintype.”