Boris arrived in Viet Nam in 2007 from France, bringing with him 5000 boxes of Polaroid film. He also brought with him the benefits of his photographic apprenticeship with his mentor xxx yyy at Studio Des Plantes. Already talented at capturing precise moments and moods in fashion and portraiture, he has been continually obsessed with how he could paint with light in the most original way. After with a giant Polaroid camera in Vienna, he knew somehow this quest would involve pushing back against the digitalization of the photographic process. As Boris brought his special touch to various assignments for clients in the bustling big cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, he continued to muse over his own ‘impossible project’. He never forgot reading about the wet-plate collodion process, a mid-19th century innovation by photographic pioneer Gustave le Gay. But it wasn’t until Boris moved to Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage-listed trading port in central Viet Nam, that the optimal connections started to materialize. In 2018, his journey crossed paths with another photographer who happened also to be a skilled carpenter, Francis Roux. He took Boris’s esoteric vision and with 400hrs of labour, transformed it into a hand-made wooden camera apparatus, complete with bellows, to house a 100x100 glass wetplate.