Silver Tongued Project
“Making a book in the 21st century is an act of creative defiance. This book is not a product — it is a work of art, design, and community.”
Media: Scroll below for press release. Silver Sun Publications is pleased to announce the release of Silver Tongued by Paul Elter. This much anticipated 300-page art book presents an interplay of photographic portraiture and storytelling, drawn from Elter’s rich practice as a visual artist and wetplate photographer. Limited edition of only 200 copies.
Silver Tongued (ISBN: 978-0-9880049-0-0) For media inquiries, event information or to purchase books or prints from the edition, contact: paul@elter.ca
Inspiration for the book coalesced during my experience as a writer-in-residence at the Al & Eurithe Purdy A-frame, a prestigious writer’s retreat. Al Purdy, with his wife Eurithe, built their home on the shores of Roblin Lake in Ameliasburgh, Ontario, beginning in 1957. Al Purdy is considered by many to be Canada’s unofficial poet laureate.
For decades they hosted luminaries of Canadian literature (such as Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje), inviting them to visit, relax, and spend time talking poetry. Today, the A-frame and its charitable foundation continue that tradition. Inspired by the history of the place, I set out to collect not only images but also the stories that surfaced during those intimate, unhurried wetplate portraiture sessions.
The result is a deeply collaborative work of art—combining the chemistry of light, silver, and conversation, a blend of images and narrative in equal measure.
This residency gave me a through line that I couldn’t see before. It helped define several disparate parts of my 30+ years of artistic practice. Several bodies of work from my photographic practice had long seemed orphaned—interesting, singular moments with no home. This book project provided their natural home, and they are integrated throughout. The creaking bones of the A-frame gave the book spirit.
Portraits reveal themselves slowly.
What I found compelling was that during sittings these people, whom we had never met before, would open up in a very personal and revealing way, because time essentially had slowed down. Space and safety were created by the nature of the process itself, with both photographer and sitter suspended in a distinct moment.
