Memory, Authenticity, and Historical portraiture

I grew up holding old photographs by the edges, the way you hold something that might still be breathing. This work is my letter back to them. These are not wet plates. The chemistry is wrong, and most of these frames would be impossible on a real collodion plate. I shoot with a modern camera and let it see what a 19th-century lens never could. Then I bring the image home and let time catch up to it. Silver. Dust. The little ghosts that gather at the edges of glass. I am not faking the past. I am trying to remember a feeling I never had — the hush before someone says hold still, the dignity people put on like a coat when they knew the picture would outlive them. My subjects are modern. The clothes are borrowed. The reverence is real. Small acts of haunting, in both directions. Hold them by the edges.