Mark Delafosse (Abdul Malki Ai-Tarig), Angola, Louisiana 11 - 1999

Deborah Luster made this photograph, ‘Mark Delafosse (Abdul Malki Ai-Tarig), Angola, Louisiana’ using the tintype process. Look at the way the light kinda pools up in the emulsion, like a spill or stain. The sepia palette gives the image an antique feel, like something from a dusty archive. This tintype’s surface has an almost liquid quality, as though the image could slip and slide. See how the dark background isn’t flat? It’s mottled, uneven, alive. Then there’s the book, cradled in his hands, a source of knowledge and power, rendered in sharp detail. Note, also, the soft focus of his face, and his hand on his heart. This is a portrait that feels both intimate and monumental. Like the work of Sally Mann, Luster’s work uses historical photographic processes to explore themes of memory, identity, and the American South. But unlike Mann, Luster focuses on the lives of those on the margins. Here, the image’s dreamy ambiguity is part of its power.