Amanda Webb, St. Gabriel, Louisiana 28 - 1999

Deborah Luster made this small photographic plate of Amanda Webb in St. Gabriel, Louisiana. The process of making tintypes like this feels like a strange kind of alchemy to me. I imagine Luster working in the darkroom, carefully coating the metal plate with chemicals, then exposing it in the camera. The image slowly materializes, a ghostly apparition emerging from the darkness. I wonder what Amanda Webb was thinking and feeling in that moment. Her brow is furrowed, her gaze direct and unflinching. There's a vulnerability there, but also a sense of defiance. The warm tint of the photograph softens the starkness of the image, giving it a dreamlike quality, like a memory half-forgotten. It reminds me of the work of other photographers like Julia Margaret Cameron, who used the wet collodion process to create haunting, ethereal portraits. Artists are always in dialogue with one another, riffing on ideas and techniques across time.