Starting with 100+-year-old photographs of anonymous subjects, the artistic process uses multiple exposure, intentional camera motion, and layering to create new portraits that are entirely unpredictable and startling.
With these techniques, I explore the intersection of photography and contemporary art to create evocative, painterly likenesses of personality and mood. Dust, tears, and blemishes that mark the original photographs add rich, abstract elements.
Nothing is added or subtracted during the 'development' process. Emerging through the thick veil of time, the reappearance of the sitter is the survival of memory. The original photographs are part of the collection at the Texas Digital Archive.
Texas Portraits #1, An Unidentified Man (Original Image: 1/102-651, People Collection, Prints and Photographs. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission)
Texas Portraits #3, An Unidentified Man
Texas Portraits #3, An Unidentified Man (Original Image: Portrait of an unidentified man, eyes hazel, hair gray, brows dark; 1/102-648, People Collection, Prints and Photographs. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.)
Texas Portraits #5, An Unidentified Man (Original Image: 2011/348-17-10, Rugeley family, Photographs, Richard Bachman Collection. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.)
An Unidentified Man (Original Image: 1/102-629, People Collection, Prints and Photographs. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.)
An Unidentified Man (Original Image: 1975/070-2070, William Deming Hornaday photograph collection. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.)
An Unidentified Man (Original Image: 2011/348-17-15, Rugeley family, Photographs, Richard Bachman Collection. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.)
The Texas Portraits were created for the A Smith Gallery in Johnson City, Texas. Curated by Kevin Tully and Amanda Smith, Texas Portraits 1 through 5 were on display at the Alley Gallery in 2022.
