The Ancients


  • Photographer
    Caitlin McCaffrey
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    2011
  • Technical Info
    Tintypes

These images are of Greek and Roman statuary at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the Getty Villa, Malibu. They are tintypes, produced using a wet collodion process first developed in the 1850’s. My intention is to explore the evanescent moment experienced between the observer and these remote yet familiar objects. The experience is an intimate one—about one person looking at another. I understand these statues as individuals, as people—breathing, looking, engaging with someone or something specific. I intend to continue this project to include hundreds of more statues.

Story

These images are of Greek and Roman statuary at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the Getty Villa, Malibu. They are tintypes, produced using a wet collodion process first developed in the 1850’s.

My intention is to explore the evanescent moment experienced between the observer and these remote yet familiar objects. I refer to the statues as individuals, as people—breathing, looking, engaging with someone or something specific. Their stories are mysterious and tied to the past, yet nonetheless present and complex. I want to represent their vulnerabilities and peculiarities, but of course they remain as real and distant as any portrait subject.

When you look at a tintype there is a unique interaction between the positive image in the collodion and the black tin background that provides a shifting response, depending on where the viewer stands and how the light is reflected. This lends the image a particular physicality, a breath, as if the embedded image is continually rising out of the material. Additionally, each tintype is uniquely its own object—solid, metallic, yet fragile and displaying in its surface and at its edges the markers of its making.

The tintype was the first affordable photographic portrait medium. They are small, precious and require close attention. The experience is an intimate one—about one person looking at another. I intend to continue this project to include hundreds more statues.

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