FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING ON ORDERS OVER $75! *TERMS AND EXCLUSIONS APPLY

HEAVY METAL

Justin Borucki’s masterful tintype photography.

December 1, 2022

Remember the old-timey photo booth at the amusement park when you were a kid? Mom and Dad would pass the kids onto someone else; the boys would strap on a fake pistol, (probably) lice-ridden cowboy hat, moth-destroyed waistcoat, and fake mustache to cosplay a murdering vagrant; and the girls would lace themselves into an inhumane corset with a hoopskirt pretending to be an underage sex worker. Why live in the era of typhus, yellow fever, and Native American genocide when you could just fake it for a $50 sepia-toned Polaroid? Those tourist-trap photos were based on an actual style of photography from the 1800s, one that utilized a chemical process on a piece of tin that produced an image called a tintype. Instantly recognizable and copied incessantly, tintypes are a lost art to all except the rare bird with the patience (and the working technology) to pull it off. Like esteemed photographer—and owner of Tintype NYC—Justin Borucki.

Sign In to Your Account

Registered subscribers can access the complete archive.

Login

Don’t have an account?

Subscribe

...or read now for $1 via Supertab

READ NOW