Jayne Hinds Bidaut
American, 1965-

Tragocephala Crassicornis (Rorschach Beetle), 1999 (printed 2000)
tintype, ed. 3/10
10 × 8 in.

SBMA, Gift of Joseph Bellows, Del Mar, California
2005.63

"My way of reaching people tends to be through the back door, entering directly into the subconscious, letting it take hold, then one day hopefully it surfaces…and if it never does, then at least you have communicated to their subconscious." - Jayne Hinds Bidaut

COMMENTS

Jayne Hinds Bidaut is a contemporary American fine artist who lives and works in New York and Connecticut. Bidaut is best known for mastering and introducing into contemporary art the once antiquated process of the tintype. Her fine art monograph "Tintypes, Jayne Hinds Bidaut" (1999) encompasses 103 of her Academy Figures, Insects, and Stereoscopic nudes. Her most recent book "Animalerie, Jayne Hinds Bidaut" is an intimate glimpse of the animal as commodity in the pet shop trade. Her work is collected by numerous institutions, including The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museum of Fine Arts New Mexico, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Wittlif Collections, The Louis-Dreyfus Collection, and The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.

- http://www.jaynehindsbidaut.com/#!about/c240r

Tintype: It is essentially a collodian negative made on a thin sheet of iron (commonly called “tin” because of it was so inexpensive). As a variant of the wet “collodian” process used for the daguerreotype, the plate is only partially processed rather than left to fully develop. The image remains whiter, having not turned to black as it would if it were fully developed. When the white collodian image is placed against a thin lacquered or “japanned” black-coated plate, it appears to be a positive. 
In fact it is the reverse of the original image because it is a “negative”. The tintype became popular in the 1850s and was popular to the end of the century because it was a less expensive way to produce a photograph than other processes. Starting in 1980s-present, there has been a revival of interest in making tintypes. They have limited tonal range and appear flat and soft. Also called Ferrotypes or Melainotypes.

- Baldwin, Gordon: Looking at Photographs: A guide to technical terms: The J. Paul Getty Museum in association with British Museum Press, Los Angeles, CA 1991, pp. 80-81.