Turning Back Time with Victoria Will

Victoria Will is my kind of photographer: her intelligence, sense of humor and exquisite sense of composition enhance all of her work. A graduate of Princeton University, her photographic career began as a staff photographer for the New York Post, and she is now an acclaimed editorial and commercial portrait photographer based in New York City.

For the past four year, Will has made a pilgrimage to the Sundance Film Festival; last year, she came away with compelling tintypes of famous faces. The portrait series was picked up by Esquire‘s The Culture Blog with the headline, “31 Stunning 1860s-Style Portraits of the Stars at Sundance,” as well as by Yahoo! and The Huffington Post. The images were also honored by our sister publication, PDN, in the 2014 Photo Annual in the magazine/editorial category.

In an interview with The Culture Blog, Will says she first became intrigued with the wet-plate process at the Photoville festival in Brooklyn, New York, where photographer Lisa Elmaleh made a tintype portrait of her. Will says she’s “fallen in love” with the unpredictability of the process, and the beauty of each plate being entirely unique.

“Each plate requires time to be made, exposed and developed right away, so my subjects really had to take a moment to participate—I think it encouraged them to slow down and be present with me.”

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