David Sokosh

In this era of viewing digitally created images on screens, I am part of the renaissance in hand-crafted photography. Using the Nineteenth Century techniques of black and white film shot in large format view cameras and cyanotype printing, I create photographic pieces on paper in limited editions. I am drawn to the hand-crafted nature of these photographs.

I live in a self-created pre-modern world full of period objects of all kinds. These authentic process lets me explore the mindset of the early photographer/scientist/collector. I’m drawn to the quality of photograph-as-object that cyanotype yields and I see the limits of these technologies as a challenge rather than a hindrance.

The images in "Equipoise" are from two portfolios: “Past/Present-Memory/Loss” and “Things That Look Like the MOON (but are not the moon)”. They explore this photographer's interest in material culture, typography, storytelling and still life as portrait/self portrait. From casts of ancient sculpture through combinations of ceramic forms with words in the glazing to studies of beautiful flowers, these photographs provide a glimpse into my world.

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David Sokosh was raised in Bethel, Connecticut, the son of two amateur photographers. As a result, he began taking pictures at an early age. He graduated from Western Connecticut State University in 1989 with a BA in Photography and settled in Brooklyn, New York that fall. Sokosh worked at Kelton Labs from 1989 to 1997. During that time he worked with Lillian Bassman, Steven Klein, Brigitte Lacombe, Helen Leavitt, Mary Ellen Mark, Mark Seliger, Lou Stettner, and many others. By 1991 he had become interested in the Polaroid Transfer process and received a number of grants from the Polaroid Corporation, culminating in a 20x24-studio grant in 1992 and inclusion in their permanent collection. Sokosh participated in group exhibitions in New York City including a solo show in 1996 at Bergdorf Goodman Men featuring 35 architectural images. While in Provincetown, MA, in 2001, he began a study of the relationship between power lines and architecture. Forty-eight images from this series were published as the book "Provincetown Lines" by St. James Workshop in 2004. Sokosh was the director of Underbridge Pictures, a gallery in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn from 2005 - 2008. Underbridge specialized in images of architecture, exhibiting painting and photography.
Always interested in historic photo processes, Sokosh has never taken up digital photography. In fact, he has moved backward from traditional film and gelatin silver printing to the mid 19th Century process of wet-plate collodion, which he now uses exclusively. Wet-plate creates unique images on metal and glass, commonly called tintypes and ambrotypes. His tintypes appeared in the New York Times on the cover of the Thursday Styles section accompanying the story “This Just in from the 1890’s”
He moved from Brooklyn to Claverack, NY in 2015, and has a new daylight studio and wet-plate darkroom there. David Sokosh was was included in the exhibition: "Views of Antiquity Shaping the Classical Ideal" Spring 2019 at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, FL. He will have select photographs in the exhibition "Time Lapse" at the Shelburne Museum in Burlington, VT fall of 2019.
Sokosh’s work in included in numerous collections including the Polaroid Corporation, Pfizer, the Kinsey Institute, the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, and many private collections.