This is an ongoing community-based collaborative project that examines the creation of latinx identity through an experimental form of storytelling.
This project came about in thinking about my own multiracial Latinix background, how I identify, and my interest in how other multiracial Latinx construct their identity. What started out as conversations with friends and family, evolved into a larger conversation on identity as a social issue and construct.
I combine a subject's hand-written autobiographical text with historical ambrotype wet plate photography. The text is scanned and reprinted as the background to their ambrotype portrait. With the translucent nature of the ambrotype plate, the viewer is invited to look through the physical surface to read the beautiful handwritten prose.
When the juxtaposition between viewer, subject and background aligns - a more complete picture of the subject’s identity is revealed.
In some ways, photography has strode hand-in-hand with industrial pollution since its invention in the early 19th century. The modern camera was born into a landscape of smokestacks and smog. This project investigates fabricated landscapes - both social and physical - while exploring environmentally friendly photographic darkroom practices.
I have been fortunate enough to collaborate with an eclectic group of people including special F/X makeup artists, cosplayers, professional beard competitors, and Marky Ramone of the iconic punk band The Ramones. In this portrait series, I combine commercial lighting techniques and playful colors as a way of investigating what makes people be the way they are as I highlight their character and personality.
About Vaudeville
To create each image, I construct and photograph miniature sets. I combine the photographs of these carefully lit sculptures with other photographs of people and life-size props.
The final digital composite is then sent back through time using a combination of cyanotype and gum bichromate printing. Slowly, the once perfect digital image now rematerializes as an imperfect one of a kind object. No two prints are identical, and each edition carries it’s own magic.
In this new experimental work, I’m using soundwaves and lightwaves to make images of resonance without using a camera.
Using a chladni plate - which is a rigid plate supported by a post in its center - I sprinkle some sand onto the surface and vibrate it at certain frequencies. Exotic and beautiful patterns appear as the sound pushes through the sand medium. The higher the frequency, the more elaborate the pattern. I then contact print the pattern using the cyanotype printing method.
For making prints of my patterns, I wanted to use Cyanotype, because of its connection with early technical blueprint drawings, and the experimental biological specimen work of Anna Atkins. Cyanotypes are also most sensitive to UV light - which is a waveform that can't be seen with the human eye but can be felt and experienced, Sound can’t be seen but experienced. These are an experiment that connects between what can’t be seen but can be felt.
A selection of collaborative wet plate collodion work.
These images were captured using a hacked scanner and lens. Experimenting with choreographed movements, I’m exploring visual anomalies unique to scanning bodies in motion.
I've become increasingly interested in 3D scanning and how ordinary objects and people translate into their digital counterparts. This project is in its infancy and I will be posting updates to this page as progression occurs.
Click the Play Button over the image to activate the model and move it around.