My work has evolved from black and white imagery, to personal narrative photography using antiquarian printing techniques. I have established a long, complex road leading to the final, narrative image. The beginning of this process involves selecting geographic locations, photographing backgrounds (e.g. landscapes, city scapes, etc.), and finding models.
On a given day, the choice of landscape is both instinctual and deliberate. With a film camera in hand, and an idea of the mood I want to capture, I immerse myself in the setting’s topography. While creating these evocative sets, I am also working on creating the characters for a particular narrative. Once I have decided on a model, I make a rough sketch in my journal, which serves as a kind of story-map to guide the actual photoshoot (again, with film camera) in the studio.
After developing the film, I digitally scan the images into my computer so that I can create a surreal montage based on the landscape and characters I have chosen for a narrative composition. Lastly, I produce a digital negative on acetate and subject it to contacting printing after mixing and coating archival paper by hand with an emulsion of platinum and palladium salts. The contact print is made by placing the digital negative into the hand-coated paper and exposing it to ultraviolet light for an extended amount of time.
Although this is a costly and time-consuming production process requiring meticulous attention to detail, this approach offers a flexibility unconstrained by production issues characteristic of the past. By using traditional antiquarian techniques along with image editing technology, I am able to shift my process by creating different layers that come together in a single image once the elements make their way into the computer.