Standing in the shade of the trees at the edge of Deering Oaks Park, photographer Troy Bennett pours a collodion solution over a small square of aluminum, tilting it slowly to coat the entire surface. Ducking under the black cloth of the mobile darkroom mounted to the back of his antique motorcycle, he dips the metal into a bath of silver nitrate, then fits it into his camera.

Less than 10 minutes later, after another bath in chemicals and water, the tintype portrait that emerges looks straight out of the early days of photography in America.

“The best way to describe it is oldsy-timesy,” Bennett says of tintypes, which he makes during pop-up portrait sessions at local breweries and the WW&F Railway Museum in Alna. “It feels like a little parlor trick, but it’s way more than that.”

In an age dominated by digital images, tintype photography is capturing the interest of photographers nearly 170 years after the process was first invented, transforming how photos were made in the United States. Maine photographers who make tintypes and ambrotypes — photographs made the same way but on glass instead of metal — say the process gives them room to slow down and work with their hands while challenging them to see things a little differently.

Tintypes date to the 1850s and replaced daguerreotype photography, which had been the industry standard for more than a decade. The process, invented in America, was essentially the 19th century version of a Polaroid because the photos were developed on the spot.

The tintype process, also known as the wet plate collodion process, creates a direct positive image directly on a metal plate coated with a dark lacquer. Tintypes were a bit of a misnomer because they were never made on tin.

“It allowed for a transformation of the field of photography because it was inexpensive, it was easy to make and it could be mounted to a sheet of paper and placed in the mail and sent easily to loved ones across the country,” Jeff Rosenheim, a Metropolitan Museum of Art curator said in a recent Instagram reel about tintypes. The museum is set to open a new exhibit, “The New Art: American Photography, 1839-1910” that features tintype and ambrotype photographs.

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The invention of tintypes coincided with the arrival of new immigrants to the country and at time when “everyone wanted to pose for a picture,” Rosenheim said.

“They realized they could be more themselves, so there’s a playfulness to the tintype,” he said. “They’re proud of the opportunity to express themselves. They project themselves into the picture in new and exciting ways.”

Photographers, many of whom traveled to people’s homes and shops, catalogued the American experience in a way that was accessible to everyday people.

“This was the first opportunity for photographers to go out into the world and make pictures of faraway places,” said Cole Caswell, a photographer from Peaks Island. “It was the first moment a pharmacist or a farmer would afford to have their pictures made.”

A SENSE OF AMAZEMENT

Bennett, 53, of Portland, became interested in photography as a kid when he wanted to draw comic books like his friend, but realized he couldn’t draw. He started taking photos with a camera his dad gave him, then learned to develop his own film while studying at the University of Southern Maine.

He went on to work as a photojournalist, shooting with a digital camera, but was always interested in the history of photography.

“I’ve always liked my hands in the water and the chemicals and wondered if anyone still made tintypes,” he said. A Google search led him to John Coffer, who helped revive interest in tintypes in the ’70s and early ’80s.

Coffer lives on a farm in upstate New York with no electricity or running water, so Bennett wrote a letter asking if he’d take him on as a student. He agreed, and Bennett headed to the farm to learn the process. Fifteen years later, Bennett still goes back to the farm each summer for a gathering of tintype photographers.

In recent months, Bennett has been making tintypes by setting up at breweries and the railway museum. It’s a new experience for most people who sit for a portrait.

“When the images comes up in the fixer, it’s kind of instant and everybody goes, ‘Oh wow, did you see that? That’s so cool,'” he said. “People are so unfamiliar with analog photography of any kind that it’s really novel to them. They’re interested in something physical, something permanent, something that’s not on their phone.”

Caswell, 44, teaches at Southern Maine Community College. He learned the process about 15 years ago after he finished graduate school and “wanted to play in the darkroom.”

“At first I was really interested in the aesthetic and how the images looked like they were from an altered sense of time,” he said.

Over time, he’s come to appreciate the slowness of the process and how aspects of the world around him like humidity and dust get into the images. He’ll make tintypes in the studio, but in the summer, often sets up outside at farmers markets, First Friday art walks and the Common Ground Fair. He occasionally goes to Civil War events and has done commissions at places like Shaker Village and Block Island.

Caswell says people are often amazed at the process.

“People really respond to seeing photography done in a way that’s not encapsulated on your phone,” he said. “It’s this keepsake that becomes part of their own personal archival and story.”

A ‘MAGICAL’ PROCESS

Eugene Cole has always been into analog photography, historical photo processes and making things with his hands. So it wasn’t much of a surprise that he was drawn to making ambrotypes, teaching himself through books and YouTube videos.

“I enjoy how slow and labor intensive the process is, it forces you to slow down and be in the moment and the place you are in,” he said. “And when making a portrait, it gives the sitter an opportunity to compose and present themselves in a way they want to be photographed.”

Cole, a 57-year-old surfer from Cape Elizabeth, often makes ambrotypes that revolve around the ocean:  sometimes seascapes, other times portraits of surfers. He is currently working on an ambrotype project he calls “Quiver.” Each portrait he makes for the project shows a surfer with their quiver, or surfboard collection.

Cole has turned his van into a darkroom for wet-plate photography and many of the surfers he photographs come into the van to watch the images develop.

“It’s a magical, fascinating process to see the image appear right in front of you,” he said.

Kari Wehrs, chair of the photography program at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, found herself drawn to tintypes because it is “sort of a meditative practice.”

“It feels so different than the snaps of a cellphone or a digital camera,” she said. “It is completely unique. You literally can’t repeat a frame.”

During graduate school in Arizona, Wehrs used the tintype process for her project, “Shot,” which featured images of people with their guns at a shooting range in the desert. Tintypes are commonly associated with the Civil War because soldiers would have their images made and sent home to family, she said.

“It has this haunting relationship with the American Civil War, which I aimed to use in a contemporary way to discuss culture wars of society,” she said.

Out in the desert, Wehrs set up a pop-up ice fishing shelter as a darkroom and started talking with people about their relationships with guns. She then made portraits of them with their firearms, sometimes in classic Civil War poses, and asked if they wanted to use their portrait as a target. Some took her up on the offer.

Now back in Maine, Wehrs will teach a workshop on the process this summer for young artists.