Peter Swann

Peter Swann is an artist / photographer working with historic processes based in Twickenham. 

Pete specialises in portraits and landscapes of Richmond people and the borough and will be displaying wet plate collodion and silver/gelatine prints, made in his own darkroom, and demonstrating some of the remarkable large format cameras he builds and uses to offer bespoke portraits and workshops using the 19thcentury collodion photographic process @teddingtontintype.

Pete studied industrial design in London in the mid 1990s.  From 1998-2001 he worked on industrial printing machines and factory automation systems.  Then for 13 years he worked for a charity designing special equipment for disabled children.  That included the award-winning Bugzi, an electric wheelchair for toddlers, which is still in production.  

In both roles he learned workshop skills and about materials and manufacturing processes.  In 2014 he left the charity to become an artist www.peteswann.co.uk .  In the last few years Pete has returned to photography, where his creative journey first began, but with the skills needed to build cameras as well as take pictures.  He has built more than a dozen unique large format cameras to his own designs, from 5x4 up to 12x16.

After an initial series of wet plate collodion demonstrations at The Beach ‘Richmond Arts Open Studio’ exhibition in mid-2023, Pete established www.teddingtontintype.co.uk with photographer Simon Whitehead.  Teddington Tintype is a wet plate studio based at Teddington Photographic, in Broad St, Teddington.  Wet plate collodion is an amazing historic photographic process invented in 1851, shooting on metal or glass plates (tintypes and ambrotypes).  Teddington Tintype offers portraits and still life, and offer workshops teaching the collodion process.  

Instagram: @cameraeccentrica / @teddingtontintype