Edward Kaprov makes a final adjustment to the oversized, traditional-style camera perched on a heavy tripod aimed at an Israeli military jeep near the Gaza border.
“Let’s give it a shot,” the 43-year-old says as he strides briskly to the tent that serves as his darkroom.
Mr. Kaprov, a professional photographer, says he took to the mid-19th century wet-plate collodion process as part of an artistic project to “create a dialogue between the past and future”.
The method entails coating a glass plate in liquid substances, fixing it in the camera, exposing it for a few seconds and then developing it — all within 10-15 minutes.
Mr. Kaprov unloads a table, basins, coolers and plastic jerrycans from the back of his panel van and deftly sets up his field darkroom in the tent.
He brushes clean the plate and carefully pours the collodion mixture on it.
Then he inserts it into a silver nitrate solution, which upon exposure would turn dark, with the collodion solidifying the forms to the plate.
Mr. Kaprov returns to the camera with the black magazine containing the wet glass. He inserts it, pulls out the magazine and leaves the glass in.
Covering himself with a blanket as he stoops over the camera, he opens the lens and counts out loud to three before retrieving the glass.
Back in the tent the plate is carefully removed and treated before being taken out into the sun, still immersed in liquid — as the images of the military vehicle and gate appear on the glass.
Mr. Kaprov is working on a series of Israeli border images. “I understood that I had to continue taking the pictures the same way the first images from the Holy Land were produced to create a dialogue between the past and future,” he says.