Mona L. Rhodes, St. Gabriel, Louisiana 26 - 1999

Deborah Luster made this portrait of Mona L. Rhodes in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, using the 19th-century tintype process. Just imagine her in the darkroom. The darks and the lights emerge in an unpredictable way. The sepia tones give it a haunting, old-timey feel, like something from the civil war. You can almost smell the chemicals, the metal plate, and the patience it took to coax this image into existence. Rhodes looks directly at the viewer with a neutral expression. What does it mean to make a portrait of someone this way? Is it to memorialize them? There is a lot of history embedded in this technique. Luster made this image with her hands, in collaboration with her subject. It feels like a conversation across time. It's like she's saying, "I see you, Mona. I see the past, and I see the present, all in one frame."