While commuting to work on Metro-North in the 1980’s, N.W. Gibbons first became interested in the Bronx River as a sliver of nature pushed up hard against the parkway and the train tracks. More recently he returned to a healthier river in the midst of dramatic change. Over the past year N.W. Gibbons has explored the Bronx River as part of his River Series that follows the course of a river from its sylvan source to its industrial mouth. Using the antique tintype process, he searches out isolated pockets where there is clearly a push and pull between the urban and the natural. The technique gives the image a historic quality, but clearly these are images of the contemporary river.

Gibbons adapts the time-sensitive process used by 19th-century pioneers of photography which poses artistic and logistical challenges. Because his developing station needs to be close-by, he created a cart to bring it to the river’s edge. On site the metal plates are coated with an emulsion made of bromide/iodine suspension in collodion that is sensitized in Silver Nitrate. Then the plate is placed in the 11” x 14” view camera and only one image is shot at a time. He has less than 10 minutes to return to the cart to develop the plate in a solution of potassium cyanide. At all times the plate must be handled with utmost care. After returning to the studio the plate is sealed with Sandarac varnish.

N.W. Gibbons has exhibited in Repositioning the Landscape at the Westport Arts Center, Westport, CT; and Out of Ether – Contemporary Collodion Artists, RayKo Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and at the Bieneke Rare Book Library Yale Univeristy, New Haven, CT; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; and Silvermine Galleries, New Canaan, CT. His photographs are in the collection of Wesleyan University, Yale University Art Gallery, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and the Library of Congress. He earned his BA from Yale University, New Haven, CT. In addition to being a photographer, he is an Associate Fellow of Letterpress Printing at Yale University and a Firefighter/Fire Inspector for the Westport Connecticut Fire Department.