Artisans of Dartmoor - Book - Page 61
camera, mobile darkroom and chemicals, and began taking
portraits of friends and family to practise her skills.
In 2015, now in her early 50s and confident in her new
craft, Nicky moved from Exeter to Moretonhampstead
and won an Arts Council grant to photograph 100 people
in the town for an exhibition at its gallery, Green Hill
Arts. This was not only an important milestone in her
career, but was also a revealing experience for her subjects.
“There’s something ethereal and mystical about wet-plate
portraits – it feels as if you’re seeing into someone’s soul,”
she says. “However, they are rarely flattering because the
images show ultraviolet damage from the sun on the skin,
so I had to prepare people for that.”
Despite this, townsfolk queued up to be immortalised
in an early Victorian art form. The exhibition included
Moretonhampstead’s blacksmith (see page 15), shoemaker
(see page 246), butcher, printmaker, chocolatier, reverend
and resident author Ian Mortimer. “It was a very steep
learning curve – there’s a lot that can go wrong. If the
weather’s too cold, the chemicals don’t work; if it’s too
warm they dry out. Too much sun and the contrast is
very strong; too dark and people appear blurred. My
longest exposure, which was of Ian, was three minutes. I
don’t know how he sat still for so long, but he managed
it,” says Nicky.
Even with the difficulties, the exhibition was lauded
a success, and spurred Nicky on to produce a further
Arts Council-funded project, called Thrive, in which she
photographed her community’s greenhouses. She also
launched a programme of collodion workshops, which she
still runs at the home she shares with her husband, John,
between Moretonhampstead and Lustleigh.
If Nicky thought her Moretonhampstead portrait
project was tricky, her current venture – capturing
Dartmoor’s wild swimming community – is even more
challenging. Shooting in the wide, stony rivers that slither
across the moor, not only does she have to cart 35kg of
gear – including dozens of glass plates – on a fishing trolley
across rugged terrain, but she’s also at the mercy of the
region’s notoriously changeable weather. “I always hope
for overcast conditions because that provides consistent
light levels. I can just about cope with rain, but patchy
The Photographer • Nicky Thompson
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