Dead Weight: Tony Irons’ Large and Medium Format Film Photography

I recently produced a documentary on fine art photographer Tony Irons, showcasing his new photography exhibit entitled “Dead Weight.” The collection includes images created in a studio setting on large format film and landscapes photographed in and around Taipei, Taiwan.

The documentary captures Irons as he works in his studio producing images on large format cameras and film. Irons discusses many aspects of the project, and goes into detail about why he still chooses to utilize film for fine art photography projects.

For “Dead Weight,” Irons relied on a Shen-Hao 4x5 camera with a 150mm lens and Kodak Portra 160 film. The black and white images were captured with a Hasselblad 500cm loaded with Kodak T-Max 100 film. Irons chose a Mamiya 7ii and 65mm f/4 lens for the images he created in Taipei. Those were taken using Kodak 160/400 Portra film.

Irons scanned the negatives with an Epson v750-M Pro scanner using a KAMI wet mount solution from Aztek in Irvine, California.

After processing, the images were printed on Ilford paper with Epson inks. The show currently features a mix of 22x28-inch prints, 30x30-inch prints, and 40x50-inch prints. The particular paper Irons used for the prints has becoming virtually unobtainable, as Ilford struggles through another corporate restructuring and production delay.

Irons resides in Columbia, Missouri. His recent projects, besides ‘Dead Weight’, include a series of images from Palm Springs and Southern California. Irons’ work has been featured on PBS. Given his penchant for mid-century modern architecture and design, it’s no surprise that his images have been featured in Elle Decor, Atomic Ranch and Modernism magazines.