Using traditional and digital technology, Faculty member Laura Kurtenbach combines tintypes and photo booth portraits to blend the past and present into haunting images.
Says Kurtenbach:
Creating a dichotomy and juxtaposition is important in my work and I feel it helps
engage the viewer. I want this engagement to spawn questions; Are these
images documents, are they fiction, how do the parts unify and how are they
playing off one another? How do images lie, even when they are created through
a mechanical process, how might visual images change how we think about the
past and therefore the present? Our culture is permeated with images, they are
as much a part of our culture as food or sex, so I wanted to explore my "oneness"
with these historical images, by literally combining my likeness with them, telling
parts of two very different stories; One of an upper class that could afford tintype
images of themselves and one of a modern day, lower-middle class that use the
photo booth as the original "selfie".