Like most wet plate photographers, I use a period lens (1860's Ross) and chemical formulas from the same era. Occasionally a 1930's Schneider lens is used to achieve focal points not possible with the older Petzval style lens.

I currently do less photography, but have some exciting new implementations coming for some of my metal art, specifically in my Babel and Miscegenation series.

I am taking 2018 off from festivals and markets but will still be available for studio work and private events!

Birmingham Shots

Wet Plate Images

My work in Wet Plate Photography is currently focused on complimenting and strengthening a long in the making essay, Of Flesh and Word, that takes up persistent violence in the US South. Channeling the work of philosophers like Nietzsche, Foucault, Hayden White, and Southern Historians to make the case that it is the structures of metaphor employed in history and identity that have their resonance through violence, I have found Wet Plate images to be a perfect medium for adding a vernacular of image and a fitting anachronistic device. It has re-inspired and improved my previous attempts to articulate these concepts. In short, the tactile and immediate qualities of wet plate images ease the alienations of language and add a vocabulary of its own.

The selections above take up important aspects of culture in the US South. Central themes of time, history, genealogy, honor, race, and their expression through metaphors of violence, literature, and music are invoked. The first six were exhibited in an upcoming Artron exhibit in Shanghai.