Cabinet Cards / Storydress II
albumen prints from wet-plate collodion negatives
4.25 x 6.5 inches, series of 5 mounted on cabinet cards
6.5 x 8.5 inches, series of 10 framed
2008
Storydress II is a series of photographs of a life-size paper mache and
plaster sculpture. The dress is made of paper mache stories that I
recorded of my great-grandmother’s autobiographical
reminiscences. Each photograph contains legible words. The
sculpture was photographed with the wet-plate collodion negative
process, printed on handmade gold-toned Albumen paper, and
burnished onto antique Cabinet Card mounts. For exhibition the
cabinet card photographs are displayed using an antique wooden
Graphoscope (magnifying device) and shelf.
Finding unknown relatives in my family photograph collection,
and noticing old photographs of anonymous people in antique
stores, I was taken by how many people were forgotten
regardless of photography’s intention to “Secure the shadow,
‘ere the substance fades away.” The older the picture, the more
forlorn the subject appeared to me. Holding their image, I was
impressed with their absence. Storydress II tries to show this
underlying subject of photographic portraiture. The 19th
century cabinet card is turned inside out, revealing the presence
of absence in a medium characterized by rigid detail and anonymity.
The figure of reminiscence, cast in plaster, parallels the poetic
immobility of the head clamp, used in early photography to prevent
movement during long exposures, aptly defined by Barthes as
“the corset of my imaginary existence”. The life size cast figure
wears a paper mache dress made of family stories: recorded,
torn up, and glued back together again. The tedious processes
involved in making both the subject and photograph are
offerings to time’s taking.
