The Three Disciplines

Alastair Cook

Alastair Cook is a practitioner of Traditonal Process photography. Alastair was asked to provide images in the following three disciplines: Landscape, Street and Architecture.

"I am an artist. I was told this on the day I walked into Glasgow School of Art for the first time. I make as many films as I put photographs on gallery walls. When I make a film for someone, I'm of course billed as a filmmaker. When I make photographs, because of the nature of them (physical, often plates on glass or tin) I'm often described as an artist. You are what you are making, creatively speaking, it seems.

I originally trained as an architect and my memories of an architectural education at Glasgow School of Art are that it was highly competitive. What it also was though was open; we worked across the whole school, especially in the early years, working under tremendous and enthusiastic people like Tony Barbour, though I spent as much time life drawing. I began to make films on 8mm and slowly my current world opened up.

I work in portraiture using wet plate collodion, an entirely chemical photographic process dating from 1851. It was the primary method of capturing images from the early 1850s until the 1880s. The process must be completed before the plate dries; this brings a certain intensity, offering the ability to produce mercurial and unique images. What drives me in portraiture is the person: sitting, talking, drinking tea with the other I am about to capture." More

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