Salt Born: A Tintype Portrait Show and Live Pop-Up in Montauk, NY

Montauk, NY — This August, Whalebone in Montauk will host Salt Born, an exhibition of tintype portraits capturing surfers and watermen, alongside a weekend of live tintype portrait sittings open to the public.

The show opens Friday, August 28th, with a celebration featuring beer from New Belgium and live music. On view will be work from The LIFERS Project, presented under the show title Salt Born — a body of work shot in 2015 using the wet-plate collodion process, one of photography's oldest techniques, dating back to the 1850s. Salt Born presents a small selection from the larger LIFERS Project, which documents people who have dedicated their lives to their passions. Each image is a one-of-a-kind tintype, hand-poured and developed on site at the time of exposure, giving every portrait a depth and physical presence that modern photography rarely captures.

The LIFERS Project began in skateboarding and has since expanded to encompass a range of action sports, with subjects who share a similar mentality — chasing their passion through different seasons of life. For Salt Born, that lens turns to surfers and watermen, whose identities are shaped by a lifelong relationship with the ocean. The portraits aim to reflect that history and character through a medium as enduring as the subjects themselves.

Following the opening, the show continues through the weekend with a live tintype pop-up at Whalebone on Saturday, August 29th, and Sunday, August 30th. Visitors will have the opportunity to sit for their own tintype portrait, watching the process unfold in real time — from plate preparation to exposure to development — and take home a piece of photographic history that's entirely their own.

Salt Born runs August 28th through August 30th at Whalebone in Montauk, NY.

Event Details:

• Opening Reception: Friday, August 28th

• Live Tintype Pop-Up: Saturday, August 29th & Sunday, August 30th

• Location: Whalebone, Montauk, NY