Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 185 - Tintypes, Roller Derby, and Rewriting Photography's Power Dynamics

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185 - Tintypes, Roller Derby, and Rewriting Photography's Power Dynamics · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:10
  Casey Fatchett: Well, that's certainly one way of doing it.
• 0:12
  Hey there, welcome to the Nerdy Photographer Podcast. I'm your
• 0:14
  host Casey Fatchett. First time listening? Be sure to subscribe.
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  with amazing photographers from all over the world and providing
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• 0:48
  information, I also go on adventures with the crew of the
• 0:51
  Starship Fibonacci. At the moment, we're currently on
• 0:54
  Moomus 2, installing an alternative form of energy
• 0:57
  production using waste products. No, it doesn't smell good, but
• 1:05
  we're turning it into something good. Speaking of alternative
• 1:09
  processes, on this episode of the podcast, I speak with Britt
• 1:12
  Bradley, also known by the moniker Nitrate Fox, about their
• 1:15
  use of alternative photography processes like wet plate
• 1:17
  collodion, how a 170-year-old process can fit with modern
• 1:21
  storytelling, like their new self-published photo book,
• 1:24
  Jamnesia. All that after the break.
• 1:29
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• 3:49
  Hello, and welcome to the Nerdy Photographer Podcast. I'm your
• 3:52
  host, Casey Fatchett, and I am here today with Britt Bradley.
• 3:57
  Britt, welcome to the show, otherwise known as Nitrate Fox.
• 4:01
  Britt Bradley: Hi, I'm so excited to be here.
• 4:03
  Casey Fatchett: I think this is going to be a great
• 4:04
  conversation. Before we get started, I'm going to start off
• 4:06
  with the dice breaker. It is an eight. What is the worst advice
• 4:12
  you've ever received regarding photography?
• 4:15
  Britt Bradley: Ooh, oh man, worst advice I've ever received.
• 4:22
  Probably to use my own legal name as my identifier for you
• 4:28
  know websites and things like that. I learned pretty quickly
• 4:32
  that actually by using a like non-gender specific name, I got
• 4:38
  into 30 to 40% more exhibitions and open calls than I did with
• 4:44
  my legal name, so I'm a full believer that you should just do
• 4:48
  exactly what works best for you and not necessarily what
• 4:52
  everybody else is doing.
• 4:53
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I mean, if it doesn't, I've seen that over
• 4:57
  the years where people are like, "Do I have to use my name? I'm.
• 5:00
  No, you don't have to use your name. Like that's that's
• 5:03
  entirely up to you. What do you feel comfortable with? It's not.
• 5:06
  There's no. I don't know. Like there's no legal guidebook
• 5:11
  saying like you absolutely must use this. Like I see plenty of
• 5:15
  people who use, as you said, like non-specific
• 5:22
  identification. to like, and I sadly understand why that would
• 5:30
  be an issue for people. And like, go for it. Do whatever
• 5:35
  feels good for you. Like that's
• 5:37
  Britt Bradley: absolutely. I think like photography in
• 5:40
  general is such a like take what works for you type of medium,
• 5:45
  and so I just always encourage people like you know some some
• 5:49
  people get very into the specific tech and some people
• 5:53
  get very into the conceptual and like it's just it's a take what
• 5:56
  works for you kind of deal.
• 5:57
  Casey Fatchett: Exactly, I mean that's why this show is not a
• 6:00
  like gear show. It is much more a conversational thing. It's
• 6:04
  like because I started out, I was like, I don't like listening
• 6:07
  to people just. Hey, you're talking like you just like
• 6:12
  whatever. If it was a video, maybe I don't, I don't know, I
• 6:15
  don't know. But I get bored about just like listening to
• 6:17
  people go like, well, this lens is going to be the lens that you
• 6:21
  use, but it's just like nobody wants to listen to that, in my
• 6:25
  opinion, because that's me. So I'm doing what works for me. But
• 6:29
  yeah, I would rather talk to people and pick their brains and
• 6:32
  see how they approach problems and how they, you know, how they
• 6:38
  see the world. Yeah, sometimes
• 6:41
  Britt Bradley: tech plays into that, but but very often you'll
• 6:43
  find that people are just they fall in love with something, and
• 6:46
  that's the more interesting bit, right?
• 6:48
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of which,
• 6:52
  you are most well known for wet plate photography. What does it
• 6:58
  actually look like, both technically and creatively, to
• 7:04
  reclaim a process with a history that you have described as a
• 7:09
  perpetual representation of the white male gaze. Are there
• 7:13
  choices you have made in how you pose, light, direct subjects
• 7:18
  that specifically push back against that? Because again,
• 7:21
  this is this was a side note. One of the points of this
• 7:25
  podcast was to, even though I am a white guy, like I want to have
• 7:31
  the perspectives of people who don't who don't look like me and
• 7:35
  don't look like me. So, well,
• 7:37
  Britt Bradley: I think that's important across the board. As
• 7:39
  someone who you know, in addition to being an artist and
• 7:43
  a wet plate photographer, I also work in archives and museums,
• 7:47
  and so I spend a lot of time with my hands, you know, elbow
• 7:49
  deep in boxes of negatives, be it glass plate or you know
• 7:54
  silver gelatin. And so I've gotten to look at a lot of
• 7:57
  historical photographs up close, and there are certainly like
• 8:01
  perpetual themes of almost like a power vacuum that has existed
• 8:07
  historically between a photographer and the the people
• 8:10
  that they're photographing, or even the subjects they're
• 8:13
  photographing. And I think you know, up until maybe the 80s,
• 8:20
  you know, that was just kind of accepted as the way that it was.
• 8:23
  Like you have the camera, you're the one printing the
• 8:26
  photographs, so you have all the power to make the creative
• 8:28
  decisions about what gets printed, what's get gets
• 8:31
  cropped, you know, where the focus is, and so I think for me,
• 8:36
  what was really interesting coming out of undergrad, where
• 8:40
  you know so many people tout photography as like truth,
• 8:43
  right? To learn even in photojournalism that like
• 8:47
  actually truth depends on you know four inches to the left or
• 8:51
  four inches to the right of where you decide to put the
• 8:53
  frame. It was really interesting to start really examining all of
• 8:58
  these historical photographs and notice these themes of, you
• 9:03
  know, if you look at a lot of treaty photographs from like the
• 9:06
  1850s, you'll see a lot of white generals sitting in the
• 9:11
  photograph and people of color standing in the back. And a lot
• 9:14
  of that has to do with collodion is extremely slow, and so it's a
• 9:19
  long exposure. If you're sitting, you're more likely to
• 9:21
  be clear. If you're standing, you're less likely to be
• 9:26
  perfectly clear. And so there were decisions being made about
• 9:28
  like who were the most important people in the photographs. And
• 9:32
  so there were conversations that started to naturally occur for
• 9:35
  me as a photographer with the people that I'm photographing
• 9:38
  about you know what was chosen historically and why the way
• 9:44
  that skin tone is represented, because all of the photographic
• 9:47
  processes that we know have been rendered to develop white skin
• 9:51
  and not people of color, and so even in collodion, because it's
• 9:56
  a UV process, right? If you have any melanin in your skin. You're
• 10:00
  gonna go two to four shades darker than you would in maybe a
• 10:04
  silver gelatin, black and white process, right? So there are
• 10:07
  decisions that need to be made and conversations that need to
• 10:11
  be had about why something looks the way it does, why we're gonna
• 10:14
  decide, you know, who sits or who stands, or even challenging
• 10:19
  those kinds of things and playing with them, that I think
• 10:22
  I'll never be able to fully level the field of power between
• 10:27
  the camera and the sitter, but I'd like to at least kind of
• 10:30
  bring them up as level as I can get them, and I like feeling
• 10:36
  like my subjects have some consent and some control over
• 10:41
  what they look like in the final product, as well as the
• 10:46
  copyright that goes into that. Very often, when I'm
• 10:49
  photographing people of color, we are sharing copyright of the
• 10:53
  final object, and they may get the final plate so that they
• 10:56
  have some control over that. And I may only keep you know the
• 11:01
  rights to show the work or show a print, but the original is in
• 11:06
  their hands, and that is something that they get to
• 11:08
  decide what they want to do with it. And I just think those are
• 11:12
  really important things to at least acknowledge, right? That
• 11:16
  there is that power vacuum, and that historically that power
• 11:19
  vacuum has kind of existed, and being able to bring that into a
• 11:25
  process that's been used in that manner to like other or further
• 11:30
  one specific viewpoint feels like a privilege to me. It feels
• 11:34
  like something that I get to have a conversation with the
• 11:38
  photographers that I've never met about addressing what power
• 11:42
  looks like, and maybe not in a revisionist history kind of way,
• 11:48
  but in a I'm existing in this time period right now, and I
• 11:52
  have some power to do something about that. So I'm gonna.
• 11:55
  Casey Fatchett: You can make different choices. Yeah,
• 11:58
  Britt Bradley: exactly.
• 11:58
  Casey Fatchett: You can change the power dynamic in a way that
• 12:01
  you know better suits how you see things should be, and I
• 12:05
  think that that's I think everybody should personally
• 12:09
  think everyone should like really examine those issues. But
• 12:12
  like the way you said it, like I I'm big history buff, love going
• 12:16
  to museums and seeing like old photos and whatever. But like I
• 12:20
  hadn't really thought about it. I was like, "Oh, as you were
• 12:22
  saying, I'm like, "Who's standing in this photo? Like
• 12:25
  that. That, I mean, I think in the back of my head, there's
• 12:28
  always the like. This is a really long exposure, but not
• 12:30
  having thought about what you just said, like who gets to sit,
• 12:33
  who gets to stand, and how that affects how the final image
• 12:37
  comes out. That's a. I mean, yeah, like take being able to
• 12:42
  take some of that power dynamic and change it, and you know,
• 12:45
  give it some Libra energy, and you know, try to get things back
• 12:48
  into balance if we can. Yeah. So when you're working with, like,
• 12:56
  it's something I have never worked with wet plate, but when
• 12:59
  you're working with that, it demands that you develop within
• 13:02
  minutes of exposing the photo, and you might be working
• 13:06
  outdoors, no dark room. How has working under this sort of
• 13:12
  chemical time pressure affected the the way you direct a
• 13:20
  portrait sitting, as compared to like working with digital, where
• 13:24
  you can just wait until afterwards to like I'm gonna
• 13:28
  work on this later. I'm gonna get the image, but then I'm
• 13:30
  gonna I can work on it for hours later on when I get back to my
• 13:34
  computer. Whereas you don't have that privilege with the wet
• 13:37
  plate.
• 13:39
  Britt Bradley: You you don't have a lot of privilege with wet
• 13:42
  plate, yeah. So I I have a darkroom here in my brick and
• 13:47
  mortar studio. I I also have a mobile darkroom ruby that I I
• 13:50
  tow with me places. And you're right, it is a very short
• 13:55
  window. The reason wet plate gets its name is that the plate
• 13:57
  needs to remain wet. If it dries out at any point in the process,
• 14:01
  you're unlikely to get anything usable. You can push it a little
• 14:06
  bit, but it also depends heavily on the available UV, the
• 14:09
  temperature outside, how dry or how humid it is, and those
• 14:14
  aren't things that you can necessarily measure on on site.
• 14:18
  So you kind of just have to develop this, like you know test
• 14:22
  the test the wind kind of feel for like understanding like in
• 14:28
  the summer your exposures are going to be shorter than they
• 14:31
  probably are in the winter because where I'm at in the you
• 14:33
  know Western Hemisphere we're tipped towards the sun so more
• 14:36
  UV or things like that it it feels more like jazz than
• 14:40
  classical music when it comes to photography, which I dig, I
• 14:43
  really like that, and a and I like that each image kind of has
• 14:49
  almost like a terroir to it because of the conditions. But
• 14:54
  yeah, you've got to be really close to a dark room, and
• 14:59
  sometimes. The way I like to push that and give myself a
• 15:02
  little bit more, I do photograph on roller skates regularly, so
• 15:06
  I'll skate back and forth to my camera in the dark room because
• 15:09
  it'll cut down the the distance a little bit, and then I can
• 15:12
  stretch that you know distance from the darkroom just a little
• 15:16
  bit further. But for instance, when I was working on my project
• 15:20
  Amnesia, you know, I worked really hard to get all of these
• 15:24
  permits to shoot in old Las Vegas on I'm now Folsom Street
• 15:32
  Experience in like downtown Old Vegas. So I was very clear with
• 15:36
  the woman that I was, you know, working on the permit with that
• 15:38
  like I need to be within 100 feet of my dark room, yeah,
• 15:42
  yeah, yeah, no problem. You're 100 feet. We know no big deal.
• 15:45
  It was two blocks. It was it was like almost a quarter mile, and
• 15:50
  so I was like, oh, no big deal. I'll throw skates on. And then
• 15:54
  the mall police at Folsom Street were like,
• 15:57
  Casey Fatchett: you can't do that.
• 15:58
  Britt Bradley: Or Fremont Street, not Folsom Street.
• 16:00
  Sorry, Fremont Street. We're like, you cannot be on skates,
• 16:03
  so I had to run a quarter mile back and forth to the dark room
• 16:06
  per plate, and I made 16 plates, and it was 120 degrees outside.
• 16:13
  And so, like you know, I'm if if you're listening to this and you
• 16:17
  don't know this, my my left leg is completely tattooed, and my
• 16:21
  right leg looked like it was tattooed by the end of the day
• 16:24
  because silver was just dripping down my leg as I was running
• 16:29
  back and forth. And so I, I both love that collodion requires so
• 16:38
  much from me physically, but it also because it slows everything
• 16:43
  down in a way, it allows me to have more interactions with my
• 16:48
  sitters. It allows them to become an active part of making
• 16:51
  the image. So if we make something and it doesn't come
• 16:54
  out quite right, I'll bring it out. We'll talk about it. We'll
• 16:56
  talk about what we change or what we do differently. And so
• 17:00
  there's this almost like a ping pong or tennis effect of back
• 17:04
  and forth between me and the sitter that I feel like just it
• 17:09
  allows for better images because I'm getting that like consent
• 17:15
  between me and the sitter, and as they're seeing it, they're
• 17:18
  becoming more excited about what what we're gonna make, right?
• 17:22
  Instead of just like what I'm making.
• 17:24
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's. I mean, I feel like I bring this
• 17:26
  up a lot on the show. Like, there's the the photo happens on
• 17:30
  both sides of the camera, as opposed to just in the camera,
• 17:35
  and that that that sort of thing. Like when you're that's
• 17:38
  the better photo, where you're involving whoever the subject
• 17:43
  is, or it's a conversation between the subject and the
• 17:47
  photographer is is a more as a viewer engaging image to me, and
• 17:55
  it shows and it's more truthful, I think, in a sense than than
• 17:59
  something that is I don't know. Manufactured on one side. Yeah,
• 18:04
  Britt Bradley: I've been spending a lot of time recently
• 18:06
  trying to think about like what is truth in photography, and is
• 18:11
  it like the photograph that you take without consent that no one
• 18:13
  knows is taken, or is it somewhere in between you know a
• 18:18
  posed photograph and a spontaneous photograph, like
• 18:22
  just trying to really tease out, like where does you know truth
• 18:26
  sit in the process of photography, and what does that
• 18:28
  look like, and and who are you making that photograph for,
• 18:32
  really shapes you know what the the truth truly is, right?
• 18:36
  Casey Fatchett: Well, it's like you said, like when you're
• 18:38
  looking back through the archives of things, that that
• 18:40
  the truth was determined by the photographer deciding to I'm
• 18:44
  going to move over here just a little bit to the right, and how
• 18:47
  like I'm going to so that this entire piece of the story gets
• 18:50
  removed from the frame, or you know I'm going to take it from a
• 18:54
  different angle, and you're going to like I'm going to make
• 18:56
  this look bigger or smaller or whatever. Like they, there's a
• 19:01
  the person behind the camera has a lot of power to determine what
• 19:07
  the truth is, and I will always tell people they're like, "Oh,
• 19:12
  you know, you see the image of it, like you know what. I'm
• 19:14
  like, "Not necessarily. Let's talk about some historical
• 19:17
  images where you see the the previous frame that has all of
• 19:21
  this stuff in it that makes this a completely different
• 19:25
  discussion. Or like when I did an interview with Pete Souza,
• 19:29
  and he would talk about like you know photographing around the
• 19:31
  White House and why he was always like, if I'm in a room
• 19:35
  full of people, like having that are having a meeting, I want to
• 19:39
  get at least one frame that is a wide shot that shows everybody
• 19:42
  who's in this conversation. He's like, that is what I owe to
• 19:47
  posterity is to like for everyone to know who is here and
• 19:51
  part of this. And like, whereas I can take photos that like show
• 19:55
  like you know the look on somebody's face when they're
• 19:58
  talking about something, whatever. But like everybody
• 19:59
  should know. Who was here, and I think that that's a that's
• 20:03
  really devoting yourself to the truth of what's happening and
• 20:08
  what's actually going on in the situation.
• 20:10
  Britt Bradley: I really like that. That's that's wise. I I
• 20:13
  think immediately when you're talking about like multiple
• 20:16
  frames, I had the privilege of working with the Dorothea Lange
• 20:19
  Archive at the Oakland Museum, and a lot of people are very
• 20:23
  familiar with Migrant Mother, but don't know that Migrant
• 20:26
  Mother is actually, I believe, the eighth negative in that
• 20:30
  series. Of she took seven more images prior, and they start
• 20:35
  from very, which is very length. She would start from very far
• 20:38
  away and then move in towards the subject, and so I got to
• 20:43
  look at regularly the decisions that photographers were making
• 20:47
  about where they started and what image made it to you know
• 20:51
  the final cutting floor, and that image is the last one. And
• 20:57
  you can almost see as you're watching the progression of
• 21:00
  frames, the moment where she instructs the child to turn
• 21:04
  their face away because there's multiple frames where the
• 21:07
  child's face is facing the camera, and what that does, how
• 21:10
  that changes the context and the narrative of that photograph,
• 21:15
  and I think a lot of at least young photographers only ever
• 21:19
  see the selects, right? You only get to see the final print from
• 21:23
  Ansel or the final print from Lang. You don't get to see the
• 21:26
  process of getting there, right? The shitty photographs you made
• 21:29
  to get to that one spot. Exactly,
• 21:31
  Casey Fatchett: exactly. Which is like this is the comparison
• 21:33
  trap of everything online. You are seeing a curated the best
• 21:38
  ofs, whether it's some photographers taking pictures
• 21:40
  now, or it's Ansel or Dorothea or Vivian Mayer or whoever it is
• 21:46
  that you're seeing. You are seeing the best, and because it
• 21:50
  is geared towards engagement, and you are like anything that
• 21:54
  has like gets more of a reaction is automatically going to be the
• 21:57
  thing that like gets pushed more and more by the algorithm, and
• 22:02
  you sit there looking at like the best of the best. Like it
• 22:06
  used to be that in this is a whole like study that they did
• 22:10
  was like when we were growing up in small communities. When we
• 22:13
  were like we used to live in like these very small
• 22:17
  communities, we would compare ourselves to others to kind of
• 22:19
  like see where we were at. Like what what do I need to improve
• 22:22
  on? Do I need to become better at hunting and gathering? Do I
• 22:25
  need to you know? Am I better than these people at this? Am I
• 22:29
  where? Where do I stand next to that? Where do I need to improve
• 22:31
  to survive? And then the internet and social media broke
• 22:35
  our brains because it just our peer group became the whole
• 22:40
  world,
• 22:41
  Britt Bradley: yeah,
• 22:42
  Casey Fatchett: and everything that has already existed
• 22:46
  visually, like the you know, like again, like you're seeing.
• 22:50
  I have people like look at a big discussion about Ansel Adams'
• 22:53
  work recently, and people looking at it and going like,
• 22:58
  oh, you know, like well, that's great, you know, like, like
• 23:01
  yeah, you know how many years he spent photographing that same
• 23:05
  spot to get that one photo that you see now. Like it's like the,
• 23:09
  you know, like he went there for years and knew the sun, how the
• 23:14
  sun was going to be at different times of year, and where he
• 23:17
  wanted to set up. Like all the work that went into that, and
• 23:20
  people don't think about it. They think, "Oh, he just went
• 23:22
  out there, set up his camera, took the phone. Yeah,
• 23:26
  Britt Bradley: yeah, and like I've been trying recently with a
• 23:29
  lot of my friends who are artists to try and encourage
• 23:32
  them to like. We, my friend Ben and I, we have this thing back
• 23:36
  and forth. Make bullshit. Like you just need to make stuff. Not
• 23:41
  all of it needs to be amazing, but if you're not making
• 23:44
  bullshit, you're never gonna get to the thing that is actually
• 23:47
  like great, right? There's there's got to be 100 shitty
• 23:51
  first drafts before you get to the final mall. You know,
• 23:53
  Casey Fatchett: You gotta screw up. You got to screw up. You got
• 23:56
  you got to make mistakes because you learn from those mistakes,
• 24:00
  and then you go like, oh, and sometimes you make a mistake
• 24:03
  that it doesn't look traditionally great, but you're
• 24:06
  like, "Wow, this is interesting. This is something that's like it
• 24:10
  grabs your interest. You're like, "Oh, how do I do that? How
• 24:14
  do I create that consistently? How do I create something
• 24:17
  similar to that consistently? Because I love this look. I love
• 24:21
  this thing. Like, yeah, I've been getting into like looking
• 24:24
  at like cyanotype prints and seeing people like take
• 24:27
  negatives and like scrunch it up and like and so that it looks
• 24:31
  like cracks. And then when it finally gets developed and
• 24:34
  you're sitting there going, okay, well that's like something
• 24:38
  somebody accidentally did at some point. Like, oh, my
• 24:41
  negative isn't completely flat, and then it came out, and
• 24:44
  they're like, "Ooh, that looks interesting. Now I'm going to
• 24:48
  create a whole other system for how this does, so that the
• 24:51
  cracks are where I want them to be, and like whatever, like
• 24:54
  whatever the case may be. It's that sort of like you make like
• 24:58
  you learn so much from making mistakes, and I feel I fear I
• 25:01
  don't say I feel I fear that there are too many people who
• 25:05
  are wanted to. Be right all the time, and feel that it has to be
• 25:09
  right all the time, and look at those photos that didn't come.
• 25:12
  Again, you we keep it's because we keep seeing everybody's
• 25:16
  selects, and we don't see the whole work. I am so jealous that
• 25:19
  you get to see like that stuff, and just because it's it again,
• 25:23
  it's why I do this is to like get inside people's mind and see
• 25:27
  things like the way they're seeing it, and it just yeah,
• 25:30
  there's so much more to it than just clicking a button or
• 25:33
  setting the settings on your camera or to whatever and
• 25:36
  figuring out you know all the technical aspects of it that
• 25:40
  people think like, oh, just give me the recipe, give me the
• 25:43
  settings of your camera. No, I can make that photo. It's not
• 25:47
  that. It's you know, there's way more that goes into
• 25:50
  Britt Bradley: it. I will. I will say for both your benefit
• 25:52
  and anyone listening that museums and archives hold things
• 25:56
  in public trust, and so unless it's a private museum, you do
• 26:00
  have a right as a member of the public to request to see things
• 26:03
  that are in the collection. Now, the museum and the archive may
• 26:05
  not fulfill your request, but if you wanted to go see, you know,
• 26:09
  and look through the binders of Dorothea Lange's negatives or
• 26:14
  contact sheets, like you, you can make a request to go and see
• 26:18
  and visit a museum and do something like that. And I
• 26:20
  actually wrote my master's thesis on physical access to
• 26:24
  photographic collections. A lot of museums have what they call a
• 26:28
  viewing room. A lot of libraries have a viewing room or a reading
• 26:32
  room where you can sit and they will bring collections objects
• 26:35
  to you so that you can see them yourself. And I actually learned
• 26:39
  about this before I ever worked in the field, because Doug
• 26:44
  Durtener, who was a professor of mine in undergrad, took us to
• 26:48
  the California State Library to look at in person Carlton
• 26:53
  Watkins photographs and Ansel Adam prints that were held by
• 26:56
  the library and special collections. So it is something
• 27:00
  that you do at least have some access to, and a lot of you know
• 27:04
  this big push to digitize collections that's happening
• 27:06
  right now, particularly nitrate because nitrate is you know
• 27:11
  rapidly deteriorating and we're losing it. More and more of
• 27:15
  those things are available online on places like the Online
• 27:19
  Archive of California, where you can just literally search
• 27:21
  through photographic collections from every museum and archive
• 27:25
  that's on there. It's it's pretty incredible what you have
• 27:28
  access to now.
• 27:28
  Casey Fatchett: I think that people like they they don't
• 27:31
  realize that stuff. Is I think thank you for bringing that up.
• 27:34
  They don't realize that they have access to those sorts of
• 27:37
  things. It's not just for National Treasure movies where
• 27:39
  they people go into a room and handle precious documents.
• 27:44
  There's more and more to it. You can you can you too can sit in a
• 27:47
  room with a you know piece of history.
• 27:51
  Britt Bradley: Yeah, absolutely. And and people like myself who
• 27:54
  work in this field in this manner, we do it for access. We
• 27:58
  do it so that people can have access to these things. So if
• 28:02
  they can make it happen, they they will. Yeah,
• 28:06
  Casey Fatchett: and like here is the thing: like ask, figure out
• 28:08
  like how you ask. Whatever, what's the worst that can
• 28:10
  happen? They say no. This is a lesson that that in my life has
• 28:15
  been the big thing. Like getting past my anxiety and fear of
• 28:21
  rejection. Just, just ask. Ask people like if they, yeah. Even
• 28:24
  this this interview, I was like, oh, what's where she? What's
• 28:27
  working happen? She can say no. She can say no. But they're
• 28:30
  like, reach out. Just reach out and ask.
• 28:33
  Britt Bradley: Absolutely. I'm a big fan of like let everybody
• 28:35
  else tell you no. Don't tell yourself no. Like let everybody
• 28:38
  else tell you no because if you tell yourself no, you'll you'll
• 28:42
  never find out, right? You'll never know. You'll just stop
• 28:44
  yourself at the gate, and and that's true across the board.
• 28:47
  Whether that's you know dating or photography or research or
• 28:51
  whatever, like just let everybody else tell you no.
• 28:54
  Don't be the person who stops yourself before you even start.
• 28:57
  Casey Fatchett: Exactly. On that note, also yes, listen to what
• 29:00
  they say, though they say no. We your studio rules are no
• 29:06
  negative self-talk, and we always ask for consent, which
• 29:10
  brings us back to a shared fanship of the idols, Natouche
• 29:16
  Bamois. How do those sayings shape the collaboration between
• 29:20
  you and the person, like your subject, in front of the camera.
• 29:25
  Britt Bradley: Yeah, I find when I set those rules down, very
• 29:30
  often subjects are not surprised by the consent, but very
• 29:35
  surprised by the negative self-talk rule. And I have found
• 29:40
  over the years, I shot a lot of boudoir photography. That when
• 29:46
  my subjects felt better about themselves, and the talk in the
• 29:50
  studio was positive and high energy, that the photographs
• 29:54
  turned out not only better, but the people in the photographs
• 29:58
  tend to like those. Images better versus you know if they
• 30:03
  were talking about well my nose is too big or you know whatever
• 30:06
  it is the self criticism is they tended to look back at those
• 30:09
  photographs and only see that thing and so if I if I can stop
• 30:14
  that at the door and I can say that our goal our mutual goal is
• 30:18
  to make a photograph that you can look at in 2030, years and
• 30:23
  feel that it accurately represents you, and you feel
• 30:25
  good about it. That's our goal. We're done. We did. We did the
• 30:29
  thing. And there's most of the time, everybody is able to yes
• 30:35
  and and buy into that. There's only been a handful of times
• 30:38
  where I've had to kick a fiance or someone out of my studio and
• 30:41
  just be like, you you can't be here. You can't follow the
• 30:43
  rules. Yeah,
• 30:44
  Casey Fatchett: it's the yeah.
• 30:46
  Britt Bradley: Sorry, go ahead.
• 30:47
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, somebody else in there chiming in. You're
• 30:49
  like, nope, nope, you're not allowed to do that.
• 30:52
  Britt Bradley: Exactly. Um, so there was an image uh in the in
• 30:57
  the project for Jamnesia that I think of that that crosses both
• 31:01
  of these barriers very very nicely. There's a skater named
• 31:07
  Aveda who skates for San Diego roller derby, and Aveda had a
• 31:13
  double mastectomy, and Aveda gets her derby name. It's a
• 31:19
  combination of her two daughters, she just mashed their
• 31:22
  their names together. And when I was down there, everybody on the
• 31:29
  team who loves Aveda kept talking about like what a badass
• 31:33
  she was for coming back to Derby after this, and like there was
• 31:35
  no like she took no downtime, and she you know had her surgery
• 31:38
  and came right back to skates, and how in awe they were of her
• 31:42
  strength, and how cool they think it is, and how inspiring
• 31:46
  it was. And so I approached Aveda, and I said, you know, I'd
• 31:51
  really love to photograph you with your scars if you'll let
• 31:54
  me. But I know that that might be like a sensitive topic or
• 31:58
  something you don't feel good about. So looking for consent,
• 32:01
  and Aveda was kind of very uncomfortable and unsure. And I
• 32:05
  said, "You know what? You sit with it. If you change your
• 32:07
  mind, let me know. So we took. We Aveda ended up approaching me
• 32:13
  later and going, "You know what? Fuck it. Let's do it. And I
• 32:15
  could tell in the first photograph that she was feeling
• 32:18
  a little uncomfortable and a little like you know off about
• 32:22
  it, so we took the first photo and it was too dark for my
• 32:26
  taste. And so I brought the plate back for her to look at
• 32:30
  it, and she had kind of like moved on and was like, "Yeah,
• 32:35
  okay, you know, I think I'm done. I don't think I want to do
• 32:38
  it. And at the same time, her daughters came over to see it,
• 32:41
  and her teammates came over to see it, and they were all so
• 32:45
  excited. And the the like positive talk about Aveda just
• 32:49
  shot through the roof. This is so fucking cool. You should take
• 32:51
  another one. This is amazing. You look so badass. And you just
• 32:55
  saw the like scale completely tip, and Aveda ripped off her
• 33:02
  shirt and skated across, like open in front of everybody.
• 33:05
  Skated across the rink, shirtless. Came up to me and
• 33:09
  said, "We're doing another one, and like just that like shift in
• 33:13
  the energy around you, around how you can completely change
• 33:17
  how you feel about yourself.
• 33:18
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah,
• 33:19
  Britt Bradley: and change the final photograph. The final
• 33:20
  photograph is stunning. It's amazing. I'm so proud and so
• 33:24
  excited about it. The artifacts in it that were, you know,
• 33:27
  accidents mimic the scars that Aveda has really beautifully. We
• 33:32
  would not have gotten that if I had, you know, not shared the
• 33:36
  photograph with Aveda and her teammates and had that
• 33:39
  interaction. Right? We would have just quit, right? So there,
• 33:42
  there is something that happens magically with your sitters when
• 33:47
  you kind of stop that self negative self talk at the door,
• 33:50
  and you yes and each other. Yeah,
• 33:53
  Casey Fatchett: yeah. It's the I don't know that one of the
• 33:56
  things I always tell my when I'm taking portraits of people is if
• 34:01
  there's something you're concerned about, you can tell me
• 34:02
  way before we shoot, so that I know about
• 34:07
  Britt Bradley: it. Yeah.
• 34:07
  Casey Fatchett: Whatever. But like when we get to the day of
• 34:11
  taking pictures, it's all positivity. It's like we're not
• 34:16
  talking about anything else. We're talking about like It's a
• 34:23
  yeah. As someone who suffers from negative self-talk, it is
• 34:27
  interesting how I'm capable of heading it off in other people,
• 34:33
  and maybe some sort of psychological reaction to my own
• 34:37
  issues. That's neither here nor there. So moving on, this type
• 34:47
  of photography was often used to catalog marginalized people in
• 34:52
  the 19th century. And when I was coming up with questions for
• 34:56
  this, I was thinking about like all the photos of indigenous.
• 35:00
  Indigenous peoples and queer people, prisoners, all these
• 35:11
  sorts of things like the that were sort of cataloged using
• 35:15
  these this style of photography. When when you're Photographing
• 35:22
  queer and gender expansive athletes today, are you
• 35:28
  conscious of that lineage, like that that has come before, in
• 35:33
  you know being present in your shoot, or does it change how you
• 35:37
  handle things afterwards? Like, what does that have any effect
• 35:42
  on your vision of how you're capturing an image?
• 35:47
  Britt Bradley: Absolutely, yeah, it does. It's ever present. It
• 35:49
  needs to be there in terms of conversations that I'm having.
• 35:53
  It it's there in terms of like my why as a personal like as an
• 35:57
  artist. Why am I photographing this? What is my goal with this,
• 36:02
  and you're right. It was used predominantly as like an
• 36:05
  ethnographic cataloging tool, which I find in a modern lens is
• 36:12
  very disturbing to think about us as cataloging, you know,
• 36:15
  human beings instead of just experiencing each other. But
• 36:18
  again, like that's that's that outside in kind of look, and so
• 36:24
  generally for myself, I try to photograph inside out. So I try
• 36:27
  to photograph the communities that I'm already a part of, the
• 36:31
  spaces that I'm already in, and if I step into a intersection of
• 36:38
  that community where I'm not comfortable, or I don't know
• 36:43
  something. I either try to bring somebody in with me, or have
• 36:47
  those conversations with the person that I'm photographing
• 36:49
  about. Hey, I don't know what it's like to be a trans skater.
• 36:52
  Can you tell me a little bit about that experience and how
• 36:55
  you feel about it? And what is the most important thing that I
• 36:58
  need to take away? You know, as someone who's making an image of
• 37:01
  you, is it being comfortable in your power, being comfortable in
• 37:04
  your body? Is it taking up more space? Is it you know whatever
• 37:09
  it is that that we can exchange information on because this is
• 37:14
  how this medium was used, and I don't want to use it that way.
• 37:17
  I'd like to use it differently. So a lot of that, just just
• 37:22
  trying very consciously to photograph from the inside out
• 37:25
  for projects, having those very frank conversations with my
• 37:29
  sitters, and not avoiding topics of sexism, racism, othering,
• 37:35
  homophobia, things like that, and letting my sitters kind of
• 37:40
  also jump rope with those tropes with me, and once they
• 37:45
  understand, you know what the history is, we can play with
• 37:49
  that together how we want, right? We can thumb our nose at
• 37:52
  it, we can play into it, we can directly do something in
• 37:56
  contrast to it. It's it's something that I think is gonna
• 38:02
  be there, regardless of whether or not you address it. So you
• 38:04
  might as well fucking address it. You might as well talk about
• 38:07
  Casey Fatchett: it. Yeah, I mean, what's I mean, this is a
• 38:10
  chance to, I mean, to change the narrative in a way, like, and
• 38:15
  really like form it and choose what story you're telling. Why
• 38:20
  not like have this discussion and like and come to it together
• 38:25
  with your subject and and and be like okay well what are what are
• 38:28
  we trying to say here like what is what is it we're trying to
• 38:30
  say and this is we have the opportunity to shape this the
• 38:35
  way we want it to be shaped instead of letting somebody else
• 38:39
  take that away. I think that that is like a really amazing
• 38:44
  thing to do.
• 38:45
  Britt Bradley: I think I think it's part of what played into
• 38:49
  that you know gaze that showed up so often historically is as
• 38:55
  photographers, for better or worse, we are very curious
• 38:58
  creatures. We like to watch. We like to see things. We love
• 39:02
  novelty, right? Whether or not we want to admit it, novelty is
• 39:05
  something that is very attractive to us. And so, a lot
• 39:10
  of the photographs that were made using this medium played
• 39:15
  into that. Like this is novel to me, so it should be interesting
• 39:20
  or novel to other people, and there's that outside looking in
• 39:24
  kind of. I want to say it's a barrier that kind of gets in the
• 39:31
  way, right? There's there's almost a wall between you and
• 39:34
  the thing that you're photographing because you don't
• 39:38
  have the insider information that the person you're
• 39:40
  photographing has. Once you are working within a community that
• 39:44
  you already know well, that you're a part of, that you spend
• 39:46
  time in, the type of photographs that you're able to get are so
• 39:51
  much more intimate and so much more meaningful. And I think
• 39:54
  specifically of like Nan Golden, who is photographing directly
• 39:59
  her like quilt. Family and friends, members that are her
• 40:02
  direct community, right? The people she saw every day,
• 40:06
  because she was photographing them instead of photographing
• 40:09
  like you know a random community that she wasn't a part of. She
• 40:14
  was able to get these really intimate photographs that didn't
• 40:19
  feel exploitative. They felt almost like family portraits,
• 40:23
  right? They felt very vernacular, even though they
• 40:26
  weren't necessarily vernacular. And so there's an advantage too,
• 40:31
  you know. I try to when I talk to young photographers, and
• 40:34
  they're like, "Well, you know, I just don't know who to
• 40:37
  photograph or what to photograph, or I I don't have
• 40:39
  anything interesting. And I'm like, actually, whatever
• 40:42
  community you're a part of, you already have a leg up. Yeah, you
• 40:46
  already have a leg up. They know you, they see you, and they'll
• 40:49
  ignore you because they're used to seeing you, right? Right.
• 40:52
  Casey Fatchett: Like that's the thing. It's like you know when
• 40:53
  people say like photograph what you love or whatever, what
• 40:56
  you're into, what the the groups that you're a part of, and I see
• 41:00
  so many like photographers who will say like it's other
• 41:03
  photographers. I'm like you have to be a part of something else.
• 41:07
  You have to be like there's something else in your life that
• 41:11
  you are a part of. Whatever that is, like whether it's people who
• 41:16
  like to go outside and hike, you like to be in nature. That's
• 41:19
  your thing that you are really into, or if it's a group of
• 41:22
  people that you know feel the same way about something else
• 41:25
  that you do, like getting in with those, like that is where
• 41:28
  you are going to feel the most comfortable too, because I think
• 41:32
  that that's something that like people on the other side sense.
• 41:37
  If you're not comfortable in the scenario like photographing the
• 41:41
  people, they pick up on it and they're like, "Wait, like even
• 41:45
  though I know you and I'm cool with you, why are you acting
• 41:49
  weird? Like, like if you're if you're feeling like you're out
• 41:54
  of place or don't belong, they start to pick up on that vibe
• 41:58
  and they're like, "Hold on a second. Like I was cool with
• 42:02
  you, but no, I'm not sure anymore because you're acting
• 42:05
  weird. But yeah, like find those people who have, or just the
• 42:11
  subjects, whatever that appeal to you. Like this is why that's
• 42:14
  such a cliche. Like photograph what you love and what you're
• 42:18
  into. Like it's because you, like you said, it's already a
• 42:21
  group that you're a part of, and you understand the terms. You
• 42:27
  understand the. I always like to when I'm photographing people
• 42:29
  before I find like before I like have them before the camera. I
• 42:33
  always ask a couple of questions that gives me like very like an
• 42:39
  insight into who they are, I always ask people's favorite
• 42:42
  movies and music, because if I can throw out a line from the
• 42:46
  movie when you're feeling like weird and uncomfortable, or like
• 42:50
  saying a lyric from a song that you love, and like kind of it
• 42:53
  breaks that thing. Like I am with you. Like I am here with
• 42:57
  you. Let's forget about all this other stuff and all that stress,
• 43:01
  those things are like it's the drilling down to the the core
• 43:08
  and being like, hey, you and me, we're on the same page. I I know
• 43:12
  what the because I have just like an encyclopedic knowledge
• 43:15
  of those things, so it's just like it's it like makes helps
• 43:17
  people feel comfortable with me and in the situation, like I
• 43:22
  know what you're going through, we're good. Everything is okay.
• 43:27
  But yeah, like that's finding that shared community with
• 43:32
  people. That that's outside of even the part groups that I am
• 43:35
  part of.
• 43:37
  Britt Bradley: Yeah, I think too. Like I said, it's a deep
• 43:40
  advantage. Like when I look at a lot of the photography books
• 43:46
  that exist about Derby, it's always from this very specific
• 43:49
  viewpoint of, oh look, you know, women in glitter and fishnets
• 43:54
  who beat each other up. It's very like a novel look at us,
• 43:58
  and like yeah, that that exists. That is part of who we are, like
• 44:01
  outfits and that that stuff is part. But there's also you know
• 44:06
  all of the after parties that we go to, and you know all of the
• 44:10
  things that we like. We have all of these traditions, like Derby
• 44:13
  wives or Derby widows, or you know breaking something. We all
• 44:18
  we like Derby injuries are such a big thing, and you know, just
• 44:23
  all of these little bits of our community and our culture that I
• 44:27
  never saw, I didn't see in any of those representations. The
• 44:31
  one image that I had in my mind from the jump that I didn't get
• 44:35
  to make was I have seen and heard over and over and over
• 44:39
  again about new mothers coming back to skate immediately after
• 44:45
  giving birth and being so new to it that they're having to
• 44:48
  breastfeed on the bench between periods, and I really wanted
• 44:53
  that photograph because it it comes up over and over and over
• 44:56
  again.
• 44:57
  Casey Fatchett: People talk about it that much,
• 44:58
  Britt Bradley: yeah, and it's. It's always like a oh you think
• 45:01
  you're a badass you should have seen so and so they came back a
• 45:06
  week after giving birth and were breastfeeding at halftime you
• 45:09
  know like and those are the things that like unless you're
• 45:13
  in the community and you know what happens or you've seen
• 45:18
  things like that happen or you understand you know sometimes
• 45:21
  there's a practice where you just got to cry in your car
• 45:24
  because you didn't play the way you wanted to, and if you talk
• 45:27
  to derby players, like most derby players will say they had
• 45:30
  at least one situation like that. So there's these repeat
• 45:33
  themes that if you're on the outside looking in, you're never
• 45:37
  gonna get right. You're never gonna understand. Versus if it's
• 45:41
  a community you're already a part of, it may not seem novel
• 45:45
  or interesting to you, but it's because it's familiar, and it's
• 45:49
  the familiarity that's going to give you the better images.
• 45:52
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's the yeah. I mean, I've been part of
• 45:58
  like different groups every time, like from sporting, like
• 46:04
  athletic groups, and over time, like you just don't get it until
• 46:10
  you are immersed in it, and it's sort of hard to explain to
• 46:13
  people outside of, but you understand. A, you hear those
• 46:18
  stories, and you're like, oh, if you were doing a project, you're
• 46:20
  like, I want that. I definitely want something like that. Or
• 46:23
  you're like, this is going to happen eventually. This sort of
• 46:28
  thing is going to happen. Like, am I prepared for when it's
• 46:31
  going to happen? And I think that's like again, like having
• 46:35
  that inside information to like you know like not to say that
• 46:39
  there are people who do not go out and cover, you know, sports
• 46:42
  or whatever that they are not actively a part of and don't do
• 46:45
  a wonderful job. But I think that those people still
• 46:48
  understand the community of the athletes and the people involved
• 46:54
  in the sport that they just like or whatever the activity is.
• 46:59
  They have to really get and represent it in an authentic
• 47:04
  way, they understand on some level beyond the prima facie
• 47:11
  sort of surface look at it and go like, oh, like yeah, I can
• 47:14
  look at. I know a lot of people will look at esports and be
• 47:17
  like, oh, you know, it's just people playing video games and
• 47:21
  whatever. But there's there is a whole lot going on there, and
• 47:25
  you know, like being able to look beyond just that sort of
• 47:29
  thing is would would give anybody who's like covering that
• 47:32
  a much better, much better image. So, on the topic of
• 47:41
  derby, like it's very fast. I have friends who do derby. It's
• 47:48
  fast, chaotic, wet plate, slow, still. How do you resolve that?
• 47:56
  Like the mismatch of those things, and I know that you like
• 47:58
  you're doing most of like portrait work and things like
• 48:00
  that. Like, but did you end up photographing Derby differently
• 48:06
  than you kind of thought you would when you started out, or
• 48:10
  did it did it move in the direction you thought that it
• 48:14
  would?
• 48:16
  Britt Bradley: Yeah, I don't think I had a a plan per se when
• 48:20
  I started photographing Derby, I think I had a plate come up in
• 48:25
  the studio. I hosted my own league here in the studio one
• 48:27
  morning, just to fuck around and play. And one or two images came
• 48:32
  out of the bath where it just kind of struck me. Where I was
• 48:35
  like, "Oh fuck! Like this is what I should be doing. And
• 48:40
  really, initially, I just set out to photograph as many derby
• 48:44
  players as I could. That was it. Like, I I had X amount of money
• 48:47
  that I had saved up and set aside for materials, and I was
• 48:50
  like, I'm just gonna shoot until I run out of money or materials
• 48:54
  or both or whatever comes first. And along the way, I just
• 48:59
  started to really see some themes emerge and some like I
• 49:07
  knew derby players had a lot in common. We're all a little bit
• 49:12
  off kilter for playing this sport in this like really
• 49:17
  beautiful way, but also I just like I think I realized in
• 49:24
  photographing it, there's a lot of intimacy and vulnerability in
• 49:28
  Derby that doesn't get shown that you only know if you play.
• 49:33
  And I was looking at you know a lot of the photographs that are
• 49:36
  taken of us are during bouts when we are moving, when we are
• 49:40
  slamming when we are falling, which is a huge a huge part of
• 49:44
  what we do. But I would argue that the bigger part of what we
• 49:48
  do is community. We build community. We show up for each
• 49:52
  other. You know, if someone breaks something, we pull money
• 49:54
  together to send them DoorDash gift cards, or you know,
• 49:58
  sometimes Derby wives will. In temporarily with each other to
• 50:01
  make sure that you know you can eat and move around and get
• 50:04
  places. There's just this level of care for each other that I
• 50:10
  hadn't seen, I hadn't experienced outside of family
• 50:16
  that I think exists in other communities. I know, like the
• 50:18
  burlesque community and the drag community are very similar in
• 50:21
  that way, but it was like it almost felt like you know being
• 50:27
  part of like a cult movie group of like ragtag bad news bears
• 50:32
  type situation that just was missing from all the photographs
• 50:37
  of Derby that I saw. You know, there's a lot of photographs of
• 50:40
  us in our outfits and playing and being a force, which are
• 50:46
  beautiful, and we all love those. But there was that
• 50:49
  intimacy, that quiet power, that like varying degrees of what an
• 50:57
  athletic body looks like, that was missing for me, and so I
• 51:02
  just kind of decided that that was my goal. Was I was going to
• 51:05
  try and represent us as best I could with the the time and
• 51:10
  resources that I had. I would love to revisit the project and
• 51:16
  expand it and include more skaters because Derby community
• 51:21
  down south is not the same as the Derby community on the West
• 51:23
  Coast or the East Coast or you know Canada or even Australia. I
• 51:28
  even got to meet you know French skaters for champs, and their
• 51:31
  Derby community seems even slightly different. You know,
• 51:35
  from league to league, there are slight shifts, and so it's nice
• 51:40
  to get as much of that variety as you can to represent us, but
• 51:45
  also just to experience it, you know, to be there to witness it
• 51:50
  is-it's really addicting. It's really wonderful in this like
• 51:54
  really strange way where I would show up, you know, with Ruby in
• 51:58
  a random town and stay, you know, with a skater from this
• 52:03
  community that I have never met, and sleep on their couch and get
• 52:06
  to learn all about their, you know, how they got to Derby and
• 52:09
  why they were there. And so there were a lot of overlapping
• 52:13
  themes, and none of them had to do with like the physicality of
• 52:17
  about.
• 52:18
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah.
• 52:20
  Britt Bradley: So I wanted to capture that, and then somewhere
• 52:22
  along the way, I'd say about three quarters into you know
• 52:27
  running out of materials and money, the same question kept
• 52:31
  coming up, which is, you're going to do a book, right?
• 52:33
  You're going to do a book, and I was like, I didn't make any of
• 52:36
  this with the intention of making a book, but okay, I'll
• 52:39
  throw a Kickstarter out there, and you know, if I get enough
• 52:41
  funding, I'll do it for as fuck because the derby community
• 52:45
  shows up for each other the way that it does. It got funded, so
• 52:49
  yeah, I I don't think I had a specific goal in mind other than
• 52:55
  just to represent us as honestly as I could, but also physicality
• 53:01
  of Derby is a lot of what we do, but it's not everything. There's
• 53:05
  a lot of intimacy there.
• 53:06
  Casey Fatchett: More of the quiet soul of Derby, trying to
• 53:09
  capture that side.
• 53:11
  Britt Bradley: Yeah, yeah, and and it's it's more a quiet
• 53:14
  power. I kept hearing the same things over and over and over
• 53:17
  again, which were you know Derby saved my life, or Derby gave me
• 53:21
  confidence, or you know, everybody thinks that your derby
• 53:27
  persona is like a luchadora mask that you put on, you know. And
• 53:31
  really, it's the other way around. I get to be my derby
• 53:34
  self is my authentic self, and then I have to put on a mask to
• 53:37
  go to work or to be a wife or do whatever else I have to do. But
• 53:40
  when I show up as you know, Dixie Normous, like that is who
• 53:45
  I am.
• 53:46
  Casey Fatchett: What a fantastic! And I get to
• 53:48
  Britt Bradley: be loud and gross and sweaty, and you know, like
• 53:51
  there was that repeating theme that kept showing up of
• 53:55
  actually, this is the realest version of me.
• 53:58
  Casey Fatchett: That is, yeah, the the being able to be your
• 54:03
  authentic self in a way that the restrictions of everyday life
• 54:09
  that makes us you know sort of makes us smaller in some ways,
• 54:14
  allowing that energy. Do you feel that there is a any
• 54:18
  particular? I'm curious any shot from the project in the book,
• 54:22
  whatever that really has a like really communicates that really
• 54:30
  communicates that sort of the
• 54:32
  Britt Bradley: quiet intimacy.
• 54:33
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah,
• 54:38
  I've seen some of the photos. It's perfect. They're fantastic,
• 54:40
  by the way,
• 54:41
  Britt Bradley: thank you. I'm thinking specifically. There was
• 54:47
  a photo that we set up of the Lilac City team. The plate
• 54:56
  itself is not not my favorite plate, as far. Is like the
• 55:00
  technical aspects of it, but the power of it is such that I had
• 55:04
  to include it regardless. And it's everybody sitting on the
• 55:08
  bench in a lunge line fashion, and the the jammer is leaning
• 55:12
  forward, ready to get up. And it's that feeling of when you're
• 55:17
  wearing the jammer cap, you don't get to relax, you don't
• 55:19
  get to talk, you don't get to have fun when you're on the
• 55:22
  bench. You're watching exactly what's happening because you
• 55:24
  have to get up in half a second and do it all again. And I think
• 55:28
  I believe Mad Hatter is the skater that was wearing the
• 55:32
  jammer cap. Just nailed it. Just nailed that photograph, and we
• 55:35
  got exactly the feel that we wanted. And it it does encompass
• 55:40
  that kind of quiet introspection that that you have to tune out
• 55:45
  all the noise and the screaming and the yelling and the whistles
• 55:48
  and really like zone in on what you're going to do next. That I
• 55:54
  think I think it's hard to describe that feeling unless
• 55:59
  you've worn the jammer panty and and sat in that exact seat, but
• 56:03
  every jammer that I've talked to has seen that photograph and
• 56:06
  just been like, that like it it
• 56:08
  Casey Fatchett: you nailed it. So that's so yeah, I get it.
• 56:12
  Like you're saying that that moment of like, oh, you, this
• 56:18
  encompasses something that unless you know, you don't know.
• 56:23
  Britt Bradley: Yeah just the anxiety of oh god, I have to get
• 56:26
  up in two seconds and do this.
• 56:29
  Casey Fatchett: So there's some tension between 170 year old
• 56:36
  photography process and current subjects and politics. Do you
• 56:43
  see the unpredictability of collodion, like the
• 56:48
  imperfections you had mentioned, like with the skater who had the
• 56:53
  double mastectomy, how they sort of matched up with her scars,
• 56:56
  things like that. Like, do they work for you thematically, or is
• 57:01
  it a technical hazard that you have to manage?
• 57:05
  Britt Bradley: I think it's both. I think it's a technical
• 57:08
  hazard that you can't really escape. Like you, you can to
• 57:12
  some extent. You can manage it, right? You can you can limit the
• 57:16
  amount of artifacts that you can get. But particularly if you're
• 57:21
  like me and you're shooting in the field and you're not
• 57:23
  shooting in a studio where you cannot control everything, it's
• 57:28
  also something you have to learn to embrace and you figure out
• 57:31
  ways to make it work for you. There are some artifacts that
• 57:37
  drive me nuts just because you know I made the plate, and there
• 57:41
  are some photographs that they're just so powerful that
• 57:45
  with or without the artifacts, I can't you know I can't get
• 57:49
  around that. I just have to deal with the image the way that it
• 57:52
  is. That I think, as someone who has a bit of perfectionism, wet
• 57:56
  plate is a great exercise in learning acceptance and deciding
• 58:04
  if the technicality of the image is more important or is the
• 58:10
  concept and the context more important. And sometimes I
• 58:15
  included in my book a fuck up plate from Vegas because of the
• 58:20
  heat, sometimes the artifacts tell more about the story in the
• 58:26
  day, and so I I do like that because sometimes when you're
• 58:31
  photographing with a newer medium, you don't get that
• 58:35
  feeling directly on the final image, right? You may not know
• 58:38
  that it was 100 and something degrees out or training or you
• 58:42
  know whatever happened, so there is some storytelling aspect I
• 58:48
  think to the imperfections that if you can learn to embrace them
• 58:51
  and roll with them can really really give you an advantage.
• 58:56
  Casey Fatchett: Awesome. All right, last question: If you if
• 59:03
  someone is interested in getting into alternative process
• 59:07
  photography, whether it's wet plate or anything else, what
• 59:13
  advice would you give them?
• 59:18
  Britt Bradley: First and foremost, take a workshop with
• 59:23
  someone who already practices the medium you want. I know, as
• 59:27
  photographers, our first instinct is always to be like,
• 59:29
  "Ah, I can figure it out. I can do it. You will save yourself so
• 59:33
  much headache and so much money if you just find somebody who's
• 59:38
  teaching the process that you want to learn and go take a
• 59:40
  workshop with them, and I know they're expensive, and I don't
• 59:43
  say that lightly. But you will save yourself, and I'm talking
• 59:48
  almost years of headache if you just go learn directly from
• 59:52
  somebody who knows how to do the thing.
• 59:54
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, the amount of like chemicals and materials
• 59:57
  that you alone that you're going to use, I'm guessing you will.
• 1:00:00
  Save just by like. Listen, I shot film when I first started,
• 1:00:06
  and got back into it during the pandemic, and I screwed up so
• 1:00:10
  many times coming back to it. Like, as I just wasn't in that
• 1:00:14
  mindset. Like, and that's with film, which is the relative. I
• 1:00:17
  mean, it's more expensive than it used to be, but like, it's
• 1:00:20
  not nowhere near what you're dealing with with collodion and
• 1:00:24
  things like that. That's you're going to have to, yeah, like
• 1:00:28
  follow that advice. Listen to Britt. Go go have someone teach
• 1:00:32
  you how to do
• 1:00:33
  Britt Bradley: it. I I see it, Casey, all the time. There's a a
• 1:00:36
  Facebook group for people who are into collodion, and I see
• 1:00:40
  over and over and over again. There's a young-I'm gonna say
• 1:00:43
  kid, but they're all adults. You know, someone in their 20s is a
• 1:00:46
  kid to me now. So, but like, I'll see them get on there where
• 1:00:51
  they-they bought all the equipment, they bought all the
• 1:00:53
  chemistry, they made a makeshift darkroom, and now none of their
• 1:00:57
  images are coming out, and they can't figure out why or what's
• 1:01:01
  wrong, and they spend weeks and weeks and weeks. And you know,
• 1:01:06
  to the credit of the Collodian community, that it is
• 1:01:09
  tremendously generous as far as like information and willingness
• 1:01:13
  to help each other. You know, they'll try their best via
• 1:01:17
  Facebook to help you troubleshoot. But if you want to
• 1:01:21
  save yourself, yeah, just just take the fucking workshop. Just
• 1:01:24
  Casey Fatchett: there's only so much we can do via comments.
• 1:01:27
  Britt Bradley: Exactly, exactly. Just save yourself the time and
• 1:01:30
  effort, and before you buy all the equipment, go take the
• 1:01:33
  workshop. See if you like it. Learn to do it from somebody
• 1:01:36
  who's fucked up a million times, and will help you avoid the fuck
• 1:01:38
  ups, and then and then invest.
• 1:01:46
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  Unknown: Hey hey hey! And now for my favorite part of the
• 1:03:37
  show, what's that say? Useless information. This is always
• 1:03:43
  death.
• 1:03:45
  Casey Fatchett: All right, Britt, it's time for useless
• 1:03:47
  information for this episode.
• 1:03:49
  Britt Bradley: Love it.
• 1:03:51
  Casey Fatchett: You're familiar with the term "cool as a
• 1:03:52
  cucumber.
• 1:03:54
  Britt Bradley: I am.
• 1:03:55
  Casey Fatchett: Do you know where that term comes from?
• 1:03:56
  Britt Bradley: I actually don't know where that comes from. It's
• 1:03:59
  Casey Fatchett: because cucumbers, when they're growing,
• 1:04:00
  are 10 to 20 degrees colder than the air temperature around them.
• 1:04:06
  Britt Bradley: Interesting. I could. Do you experience that
• 1:04:08
  when you eat them? Is that why they're always kind of on the
• 1:04:11
  colder side?
• 1:04:11
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah. I mean, if it's a you know just yeah when
• 1:04:15
  that when they're fresh or growing, whatever they they tend
• 1:04:19
  to be like 10 to 20 degrees cooler than the external
• 1:04:23
  temperature.
• 1:04:25
  Unknown: I really, I really love that. Do you want a bit of
• 1:04:27
  useless information? Sure,
• 1:04:28
  Casey Fatchett: I love it.
• 1:04:29
  Britt Bradley: Okay. Used to work with exotic animals. Do you
• 1:04:32
  know why a hyena is humped in the front and a little bit
• 1:04:36
  higher in the front than they are in the back?
• 1:04:39
  Casey Fatchett: No, no idea.
• 1:04:41
  Britt Bradley: So that they can run forward and backwards at the
• 1:04:43
  same speed, because if they're eating an animal and lions show
• 1:04:47
  up, they don't have the time to turn around. They have to be
• 1:04:49
  able to run backwards as fast as they can.
• 1:04:51
  Casey Fatchett: Wow. Okay, that's a new one. Kind of
• 1:04:54
  wondering about my dogs. Like, like she has like her haunches
• 1:04:57
  or her like she's got her. Irish up or whatever, like she like
• 1:05:01
  the hackles come up and she's got like way her spine is like
• 1:05:06
  higher in the front. Like she's pretty fast. Britt, thank you so
• 1:05:11
  much for coming. You are welcome to come back anytime. I know
• 1:05:13
  when we talked before recording that there were a lot of topics.
• 1:05:17
  You are more than welcome to come back anytime and discuss
• 1:05:19
  anything you want. This was amazing. Where can people find
• 1:05:23
  you?
• 1:05:25
  Britt Bradley: Nitrate Fox on Instagram and TikTok, and
• 1:05:28
  nitratefox.com is my website.
• 1:05:30
  Casey Fatchett: And your book is out. And as we speak, there are
• 1:05:33
  still a little over 100 copies left. Jamnesia. I'll include
• 1:05:37
  links to everything in the episode notes, so that people
• 1:05:41
  don't have to search for that stuff, they can just go and find
• 1:05:43
  it. Click on those links, folks. Brett, again, thank you so much.
• 1:05:48
  Britt Bradley: Thank you, Casey, for having me. I had a great
• 1:05:49
  time.
• 1:05:58
  Casey Fatchett: Welcome back. How amazing was this
• 1:06:01
  conversation with Britt Bradley? Huge thanks to Britt for taking
• 1:06:04
  the time to join us. You should go to the episode notes, click
• 1:06:07
  on all those links, follow, follow, follow. In you know
• 1:06:10
  follow Britt wherever you can. And while you're at it, follow
• 1:06:14
  the nerdy photographer at the nerdy photo. That's at the nerdy
• 1:06:17
  photo. No dots, no underscores, no dashes on Instagram, Threads,
• 1:06:21
  TikTok, Blue Sky, and Reddit, get following and take part in
• 1:06:24
  the hijinks between episodes. I know what you're thinking.
• 1:06:27
  Hijinks, you say? I do. I do say. That's not the kind of
• 1:06:36
  following I was talking about. Nope, I'm not following you up
• 1:06:44
  that tube. Not happening. Until next time, everybody. Stay safe
• 1:06:47
  and stay nerdy.
• 1:07:00
  Unknown: Who's your heart been beating about? You better, you
• 1:07:05
  better, you better, you