Brenda Lathers, St. Gabriel, Louisiana 29 - 1999

Deborah Luster made this tintype, called 'Brenda Lathers, St. Gabriel, Louisiana', without a date. Imagine Luster setting up her camera in that field in Louisiana. It's a moment captured in amber, sepia-toned, with the whole world looking golden. The subject, Brenda Lathers, is in prison garb, a strange kind of formal wear. You can almost feel the weight of the collodion process—the coating, sensitizing, exposing, and developing all done on site, in a portable darkroom. What's she thinking, Brenda Lathers? What was Luster thinking? The surface is smooth, almost like glass. There's a slight blurring around the edges that lends an ethereal quality. Think of the conversations they had, or didn't have. It reminds me of Diane Arbus, but softer, more melancholic. Artists, like the rest of us, are just feeling their way, working, looking, responding.