Maarten Koch

The Dutch photographer was born in Amsterdam in 1968. His father was a photographer and had his studio there, so Koch came into contact with photography at an early age. He was already in the dark-room at the age of eleven.

For 35 years Maarten Koch has been working as a freelance photographer, working for magazines, and in the advertising industry. At some point, the desire to go back into the darkroom became overwhelming – he started experimenting with wet plate photography, built his own mobile darkroom and kept an eye out for a wooden plate camera. After a few years, he became a full-time wet plate photographer. »It‘s a beautiful process that I enjoy every day. I fell in love with the process,« he says. »It seems like magic. Nature, a nostalgic camera and a silver plate. In a few seconds, you travel 170 years back in time. Only to return to the present through a composition of elements immortalized in silver. This is analog photography in its most original form.« Maarten Koch has elevated this craft to an art. His play with silver and light gives new meaning to the delicate plate. This is how mysterious-looking portraits, nudes, landscapes are created.

»I have a great fondness for authentic photography,« Maarten says, »and silver plates have fascinated me for years.« The technique was invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. »It‘s a magical process that always surprises and amazes because you are at the mercy of the elements. Every change in the process produces an unpredictable result: from mixing the collodion, to placing the silver, to photographing, developing, and fixing the plate. Each photo is unique, and that‘s so cool. Pure silver, with a gold edge!« Maarten Koch‘s photographs can be seen at home and abroad, and can be found in collections in Italy, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa, and the USA, among others. He lives and works in the Netherlands.

Web www.maartenkoch.nl
Instagram @maartenkoch
E-Mail maarten@kochstudios.nl