- There are over 500 hundred million daily users of Instagram. How is an influencer expected
to rise above the competition? I post my avocado toast. I post my fun, blessed life, whimsical poses in front of wall murals in the greater Los Angeles area. I face-tune my selfies with religious devotion to my craft. And yet, the likes, they do not come. I find myself longing for
a time when a photograph was not just noise in a void. A time when a photo meant something. Because you only got one
photo in your entire lifetime, and that photo was of your corpse. Your family loved that
corpse photo forever. And so, to return to a time
of simplicity and meaning, and to crush my competition, I have decided to
re-brand as an influencer of 19th century postmortem tintypes. One, and you're done. (dramatic music) At the end of last year, by the way, if you never
watched my videos before, that wasn't my real voice, or was it? At the end of last year,
our team rolled into the 19th century Merchant's
House Museum in Manhattan, where, for some reason, a
diverse group of historians and professionals agreed
to help us recreate a Victorian mourning, and
postmortem tintype photo shoot. We've got an authentic house, authentic equipment,
authentic mourning garb, authentic mourning accoutrement, and an authentic corpse. Just kidding, the corpse
was me, it was me. (sad music) Of course we also needed an
authentic tintype expert. These aren't iPhone filters, here, Gen-Z. So we were joined by Jolene Lupo, of the Penumbra
Foundation's tintype studio. You may have just seen her
gorgeous tintype photography on the cover of New York Times Magazine. So with the location, the
talent, and the corpse, we were ready to corpse-to-gram. Or maybe (bell rings), Mortstagram. We're still work-shopping the title, while we seek venture capital funding. Call me, Zuckerberg. But what is a tintype? It's a term that's thrown around a lot, when talking about Victorians,
or mourning photography. You may have also heard the terms daguerreotype or ambrotype. But, before I started
working on this video, I wasn't actually sure exactly
what the process entailed. It's like a photo on tin. But luckily Jolene actually is the expert on the historical process, so
roll that expert explanation. - [Jolene] Tintype is an
image that's made directly onto a metal sheet, through
hand-port chemistry. They're incredibly long-lasting. We actually still have
originals from the 1860s, when this was the predominant
form of photography. The process actually requires
a darkroom to be nearby, as the whole thing has to
happen while the plate is wet. So they also refer to the
process as wet plate collodion. Once prepared, I actually
only have about 10 minutes to shoot and develop the
plate before it starts to dry. So we're gonna set up everything first, and then go prepare a plate. - [Lizzie] You're gonna
dig out of this, yeah? - [Jolene] Yeah.
- [Lizzie] Yeah. - [Jolene] The sweet smell
of ether in the morning. - [Man] That's what's in that bottle? - [Jolene] It is largely
ether and alcohol, yeah, and we had salts added in. - [Man] So, left to
right, what's on the left? - [Jolene] So we've got our silver bath, full of silver nitrate. - [Man] Silver nitrate. - [Jolene] Some distilled
water, our collodion, which we coat the plate with, that's what you're smelling here. And our developer. - [Man] And it really
smells, a little photo-labby, but also very much just like-- - [Jolene] Well, it's funny,
that you, the collodion is like very gluely, and the
they did use a form of it in the civil war to heal wounds, and it's almost like a liquid skin. So we're shooting with a reproduction with plate to our camera, it's based off of designs from the 1850s. The lens is a Scovill-Peerless,
it's from the 1860s, so it actually would have been used to shoot tintypes back in the day. And the tripod is also original, but from around the 1910's. (ragtime piano music) - Jolene explained to
me that tintype cameras are orthochromatic, which
means that they use color in a very specific way. So anything on the face
that's blue, or blue-tinged, shows up lighter, or almost white. So in old photos where
you see people's eyes, where they look creepy,
white-walker, blank, that's actually because they were so blue. And then red, reddish-tinged
things show up dark. So I'm considering that, as I do my corpse makeup
for the tintype shoot. On this rack, we have these
dresses, which are more, isn't it funny that I'm doing
this in my corpse makeup? We have these dresses which are more everyday dresses that
I would be buried in, and this section of black
beauties, are all mourning wear, that the people who are incredibly sad, that I am now dead, would wear
to my visitation and funeral. Since when has a corpse
had to dress herself? (spooky organ music) This is actually the staircase that one of the Merchant House
sisters fell down and died, so bit of cause-play there. (laughing) - Who's Whistler's mother? You're like, it's the
most famous movie of 1982. - It's a, it's one of the most famous paintings in the world. - I've been bullied by my team. Hell didn't contempt by them, because apparently "Whistler's Mother" is the most valuable, influential painting of the western Canon, and
I just never heard of it. It's like "The Scream", "Starry Night", "American Gothic", and
then this grumpy, old lady. And doing informal polls since this day, I do know that many people who know what "Whistler's Mother" is,
learned it from "Looney Tunes", as a child, and I never
watched "Looney Tunes". This is not the content you signed up for, I recognize that, but
I feel ostracized here. (bell dings) Now that Jolene is set
up, and I'm looking dead, let's talk about why taking five photographs, took four hours. It will make you appreciate the modern art of the selfie, and not
having to hold still for 45 seconds at a time. (clock ticks) The first image we attempted to re-create, was an iconic image of women in mourning. Now, women were supposed to be the moral center of the home. So that meant their grieving
had to be much longer, and far more visible than men. Many mourning photographs depicted women, or groups of women, with
handkerchiefs in hand, weeping, displaying the
depth of their grief. This was popular in the
mid-to-late Victorian era. And it's what we wanted to recreate with our weeping women,
aka, Annie and Emily of the Merchant's House staff. - [Jolene] So these are the
steps to creating a tintype. Step one,
(gong chimes) compose the image and camera. Really trying to nail this in one shot, so we have to pay attention
to every little detail, from the framing, to the
lighting, to the focus. With framing, we have to decide how much do we want in the shot? Will it be vertical or horizontal? How is a handkerchief falling? What is the position of the eyes? And with this type of photography,
the lighting is crucial. Because the speed of
the film is really slow. For example, disposable
camera, the ISO is around 400. The ISO is the sensitivity of the film, and with this process, it's only at one. Then we have the focus,
which is especially difficult as I have a very shallow depth of field, meaning that not much of
the field can be in focus, so I have to make sure that the subjects are aligned perfectly, so
that they're both sharp. - [Caitlin] Is this happening right now? - [Jolene] No, I just
have to grab a plate, but if the plate is ready. - Annie and Emily are in
deep, or full mourning. That's heavy, black crepe dresses, that depending on who they were mourning, they would have to wear
for six months to a year. And these were not very
pleasant dresses to wear. They were often treated with arsenic. They had blotches on their skin, it would stain their
skin because of the dyes. So mourning was serious business. - [Jolene] Step two,
(gong chimes) coat the plate. Now we're gonna coat the
plate with collodion. Collodion's a thick, syrupy substance. It's actually, largely, ether and alcohol, who's sweet aroma will fill a whole room. Has different salts
that are added in also, for contrast and tone. The process is called wet plate collodion, since we're using collodion and the plate has to remain
wet through the whole thing. Step three,
(gong chimes) sensitize the plate. We're going to take our coated plate, and dip it into a bath of silver
nitrate for three minutes. (quiet, rapid music)
(clock ticks) (clock dings) After the three minutes, the
plate is light-sensitive, pretty much like a sheet of film, and then we're gonna place
it into the film holder while it's still wet. Step four,
(gong chimes) expose the plate. Now that we have the
light-sensitive plate, the clock is ticking, so
we need to move quickly before the plate starts to dry. I'm going to return to re-focus the scene. And once that's set, I'll
instruct the subjects not to move at all. Then I will cover the
lens with the lens cap, insert the film holder,
hold the dark slide, and then remove the lens cap for the desired exposure time. (clock ticks) At the Merchant's House,
since we're shooting indoors and it's so dark, we needed
at least a 35 second exposure. (quiet, rapid music)
(clock ticks) (bell dings)
This is perfect. Thank you, hmm. All right, thank you
guys, you're free to move, maybe don't move too, too much. Just you know, we wanna just
make sure we got the shot. (crosstalk chatter) - Yeah. - Relax, but-- - [Caitlin] I cannot
imagine, I was weeping. (group laughing) When you staying still, that's so hard. - [Woman] All you have to do is lie there. - Ah, yeah I should know.
(group laughing) - [Woman] Pretend to be dead. - [Caitlin] Only in this
group, would it be like, I had to sit for a three minute together, (group laughing) mine was two and a half. How does that feel? - A little constrictive.
- Stiff. - Yeah. - [Jolene] Step five,
(gong chimes) develop the plate. Once the exposure's over,
the plate is returned to the dark room to be developed. The image should appear
within about 15 seconds, but you're also looking for detail in the shadow areas to come in. Then it gets rinsed with water,
which stops the development, and removes any extra
chemistry off the plate. (quiet, rapid music) Step six,
(gong chimes) fix the plate. This is the moment of magic. The other plate has been developed, it can be taken out of the darkroom and brought into the light. At this point, it will
look like a blue negative, but once it's submerged
into the fixing solution, anything that wasn't
exposed will disappear and the plate will appear
as a positive image. - [Lizzie] I kind of like this, I think. (chuckles) Even though, it got some
like, weird stuff going on. But it's kind of-- - [Jolene] I like both. - [Lizzie] I like both, too. - I like the orientation of this one, but I hear something. - I know. - [Lizzie] To me, when I look at, and oh, she's really upset. This one's a little more staged. - [Jolene] Yeah, yeah, same. - [Lizzie] So this would have been like, mid to 1800s, mostly. You still saw it used in the early 1900s, you saw a lot of like,
different means of them trying to jazz it up, to
make it like appealing, that's like faster forms
of technology came out. So there's some instances with tintype where they use like a brown coating instead of a black, and they
call those chocolate tins, now. It was like edgy, and different. They got an 1800s, I mean
they are fully archivable. We still find them from the 1800s. - [Lizzie] Mm-hm. It's almost, you know, modern-day tintypes are my favorite way to describe them. As you're creating a heirloom. Especially with digital technology, you know, you have hundreds of photos, that live on a phone, or a cloud, and this is like a physical
one-of-a-kind object. - [Jolene] Step seven,
(gong chimes) wash, dry, and varnish. The finishing steps. Once the plate is fixed,
it gets washed again, and a varnish is applied. The varnish gives the plate
a glossy protective coating. We're using a varnish of gum sandarac, which is pretty much a
tree sap that's dissolved in grain alcohol, and there's a little bit of lavender oil added, so it smells nice. If it wasn't for the varnish, the silver image would tarnish over time. - And finally after watching the process of creating tintypes, I got to become a part of the process myself. Thus, I took to my coffin. I'm about to get in the casket for who know's how long, so... We've climbed into a lot of caskets, in this series, but this will
be my most challenging, yet. It's all been preparing, leading up to climbing up a stepstool
into a period casket, coffin, I should stay. This is anthro-portal. Okay, I'm gonna go on your head. - [Woman] Yes. - [Caitlin] You just hear
this horrifying creak. Using my core muscles, my corpse muscles. Okay, there we go. (dramatic music) - [Woman] The question is-- - Pretty comfy, there's memory foam at the
bottom of this casket, so. Do we wanna get my head higher? - [Jolene] No, I think
that's good, I think. - The head is good? - [Jolene] Yup, yeah, that's great. You fit quite well. - I fit exactly in here, I think that I'm probably a little tallier and wider than your average woman of the period. - [Woman] Yeah, average vampire. - Average Japanese vampire of the period. To explain the casual Japanese
vampire reference, there. This beautiful, antique coffin that sits in the Merchant's House, belonged to a man who claimed
to be a Japanese vampire. It's technically on-loan
from an antiques dealer, as the vampire hasn't, yet,
asked for his coffin back. - [Jolene] As you can see, the image through the
camera is upside down, and backwards. This isn't unique to this camera, or large-format cameras, it's just optics. It mimics the way our eyes see things, that our brain is
flipping the image for us. All cameras actually do this. The only reason that
we're seeing the image right-side up, is through
the use of mirrors, prisms, and special view-finders. - [Jolene] Yeah, I mean I see them, but from the sides, so
it's sort of hard to tell. I think they're okay. And then Annie, maybe lean in, yeah, a little more toward the camera, with like your whole body. (quiet, rapid music) Ready? - [Lizzie] How long am I timing? ISO 42, I'm sorry. - [Jolene] 42, let's do 40. - [Lizzie] 40? (quiet, rapid music) - I'll count you guys down to three, we'll start the exposure, okay, ready? One, two, three. (timer clicks)
(quiet, rapid music) - 40, 41, 42, okay. (timer dings) - You don't think about it when you're just standing here until-- - You don't realize how much you move. - You do.
- You move, and how, like uncomfortable it is to internally think about how you're not supposed. - That's right. - Like all of a sudden I have an itch, I have, my eyes. Oh man, I don't know if there's
much more that's profound. But, you were saying this earlier, that you don't really, you couldn't really think about your grief while you're trying to pose for this. I can't imagine in the
middle of a funeral now, saying, okay family, now
were gonna elaborately set you up, and you don't get to move. But I guess if this was the one photograph that you had of the person, you would make the effort to do it. - We also don't know when, the photograph was taken in relation to, when, I mean, not-- (crosstalk drains out conversation) - Yes, but the mourning. - Could be three months later, and they're in their mourning attire. - Still in their mourning attire. - Oh yeah. (dramatic music) - Mother Louise is taking care of me. - So many gentlemen callers! Come see my baby! (chuckles) - [Lizzie] And her face
wouldn't be in the middle of the frame, but it would be closer. - [Jolene] Close to, yeah. And we give a little
extra space on the sides, just in case. Okay, wait's fine. I can still prop you up more, Caitlin, so you don't have to be like, wedged. - Well, but at the same,
we can also get the camera. - [Caitlin] Yeah, I don't, I mean, this is not uncomfortable. (clock ticks) - [Jolene] 40, 41, 42, (bell dings)
all right! Thank you so much! - Yeah, that was great! - Yay!
(applause) - Woo! - [Lizzie] I'll go clean
a bunch of the plates, and then I'll--
- She's alive. - [Woman] My goodness! - [Jolene] We were able
to shoot one ambrotype at the Merchant's House. The difference between
ambrotypes and tintypes, is that ambrotypes, they're
shot on a piece of glass, in this case, black glass, and tintypes are shot on
blackened sheets of metal. - [Caitlin] I mean, I look pretty dead. So this is tintype. - [Jolene] And this one's an ambrotype. - [Caitlin] Ambrotype. - [Jolene] So you can
see, there's just like a little more depth to
like, the shadowed areas. - [Lizzie] This one's very sharp, though. - I'm like, but can we
do face-tune on this one. (group laughing) I look a little dead, I'm gonna be honest. (serene music) We think of the Victorians
as depicting the dead as merely sleeping, the beautiful death. But that actually wasn't the norm. More often than not, the
dead in these photographs look very dead. The emphasis was on the face, regardless of the state it might be in. Sometimes the dead were photographed after a traumatic injury, or days or weeks after they had died. Their eyes sunken, their skin, in the midst of slipping, their coloring gray. A photographer might de-emphasize trauma, employing some camera techniques to put the face receding
into the background, as if going into the great beyond. But other times, they would
just show the dead, as is, decay in all it's glory. Photography historian, Joe Smoke, writes about the Victorian passion for collecting these
postmortem photo souvenirs as, "A way to balance out our
need to be recognized, "and, or influential, against our fears "of being and, or ending as a nobody." Not too far off from the wishes us corpse-to-gram
influencers, still have today. (mysterious music) Two bits of business before we go, first Jolene's secret side passion is her love of Victorian
spirit photography. She said we could come back, and recreate a whole spirit photo shoot if this video
(bell ringing) gets 75 thousand Likes. She didn't say that of course, that's just an arbitrary
number I came up with, because YouTube has no
rhyme or reason in 2020, but I'm sticking with it, because I'm protecting
my boundaries this year. Second, you may remember
my that book launch came with a pin
(bell ringing) of my face. That should have brought me great shame, but instead, we're now
offering a completely different pin of my face. This year we are pushing for solutions to many of the problems that
plague the funeral industry. Environmentally, financially, and most dear to my heart, protecting people's rights around their choices for their own bodies, and their own dead. This year our team is planning a massive expansion of our resources,
including these videos, including comprehensive resources from marginalized communities, including data bases of
progressive funeral homes. We don't have any large grants. The whole movement is
funded by small donations. So this month, anyone on Patreon who pledges $20, or bumps
up to the $20 level, will get an individually
hand-made by Jolene, tin memorial pin, of Corpse Caitlin. Go in to Patreon for
easy sign-up, or bump-up, is in the description. I swear this will be
the last pin of my face, this year. This video was made
with generous donations from death-enthusiasts just like you. (quiet music) Influencer character,
influencer character. Hello, I am an influencer,
this is my influencer voice. All right, now I'm
Caitlin, now I'm Caitlin, Caitlin energy. Authentic, 19th Victorian
century postmortem tintype photo shoot. That was me forgetting, but I sounded like,
(group laughing) I was standing in fosses, all right let me try it one more time. You may have just seen
her gorgeous tintype photography, photography? The piece de resistance. - [Woman] Not stupid. - [Caitlin] Opp! (group laughing) I was really trying to
get a swooping shot, where I liked swooped out
if you saw the camera, but. Whistler's mother is
the most iconic, famous, painting our our generation. Oh man, I really miss that tele-prompter right about now. - [Man] These are new for rumspringa '19. (group laughing) - I'm out of the community,
and living it up. - [Man] Caitlin, react. (group laughing) - I mean, cool. It's 2020, and I'm
protecting my boundaries. (mysterious music) (dramatic musical note)
When ur crying not because u lost a loved one, but because u have to wear arsenic clothing.