Awarded an Honourable Mention 2024

These three self-portraits were created using the collodion wet-plate photographic process. While making these images, I sensed a spiritual quality in the way the alchemical process slowly revealed a deeper dimension of the subject rather than quickly capturing the subject, as does digital photography.

There is unfinished business with old photographic technologies, particularly for First Nations artists grappling with the historical photographing of our ancestors using these technologies. Indigenous art and knowledges are likewise being swept up by techno-capitalist algorithms, which are consuming and exploiting our people, culture, heritage, knowledge and spiritualities.

Through ongoing exploration, I aim to show that art and photography emerge from deep within our spirit and cannot be contained by calculation or data analysis. Making in this way and reclaiming these mediums, I challenge the digitally saturated world of artificiality and algorithms that is flooding photography and consuming our wisdom and intuition.