The tintype is a positive photograph fixed directly onto a blackened, japanned iron plate — a one-of-a-kind object with no negative, no print, no paper. From roughly 1860 to 1900, itinerant studios and Civil War field photographers made millions of them. The image is pure grayscale with no clipped white: silvery gunmetal highlights rise out of a deep, near-black metallic ground, edged by chemical pour streaks and bromide artifacts.

This system translates that wet-plate materiality to screen — a lacquered-iron substrate, gunmetal light, warm coffee-toned tarnish, and the honest scratches, dust, and vignettes of a hand-poured plate.