Old is New Again - Fran Gatti

 I thought it would be fun to photoshop myself riding my beloved black lab like a horse. My roommates and I make jokes about saddling her up all the time, or that she's built like a warthog because she's so big and clumsy. I myself am an avid player of Red Dead Redemption so I knew this time period had lots of cowboy activity going on in the West. I used images of what is probably Utah, and photo-composited different angles of my dog's body and head to get the right setup for me. I took my photo balancing on a stool which was a fun photoshoot to do in all. Masking the saddle and finding a place for my body to go that made sense directionally and proportionally was the most difficult part. In the end I used sepia tones and overlayed wet plate textures.

Old is New Again-Nikole McCahill

For this assignment I decided to use a more modern photograph. I chose an image of me in front of my jeep. I felt this created some sense of irony since the first “vehicle” was not invented until 1886 (aka the time of wet plate collodion photography). I thought it was also appropriate because I was using the jeep as a sort of prop for myself which most wet plate collodions used some sort of prop in portraits since the exposure time was so lengthy. I first made a clipping mask and removed the saturation and then added a vibrance filter to make it a more warm, yellow, aged photo. I used brushes and different blending modes over the entire photograph to make it “lower quality” as well as added a white glare and also some blacked out areas like it was introduced to light too fast. Additionally I added scratches and scuffs to distress the image. Around the edges I added a rough black around the edges as well as vignetting. Over the majority of the photo I added water/wet spots. Finally, I added a crack across my photograph from a LOC image so it looks like it was broken at some point in time.

Old is New Again - Hang Le

 

The Pictures are The Things

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a U.S. government agency that operated during the Great Depression and the early years of World War II. It was created in 1937 as part of the New Deal programs initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to address the economic hardships farmers and rural communities faced. The primary purpose of the Farm Security Administration was to provide aid and assistance to farmers struggling with poverty and agricultural challenges. The agency aimed to improve the living conditions of rural families, promote sustainable farming practices, and help farmers achieve economic stability.

For this project, I decided to go with the theme of build it up to break it. After doing some research in the Library of Congress, I came across the Farm Security Administration collection. From there, I was inspired to recreate images from those photos. I had asked a friend to be my test subject as I felt they were well suited for my idea. I intentionally took the picture of him with no face shown to create the feeling of the lingering history. The FSA is best known for its photographic documentation project as these images provided a visual record of the challenges faced by farming families during the Great Depression.

Old is New Again - Emily Furr

 

    I love the landscape shots from the historical photos so I tried to capture the same feeling. I took a photo of the pond area behind the Rowe building and went from there. I wanted it to look old and dirty as if it had been seen and passed around in its hay day but was eventually laid down and forgotten.

    I knew I wanted cracks and pieces missing so those pieces were taken from the files Jeff gave us on canvas. I used the "Fort Fisher NC" historical photo for the large square-ish chunk, I took a crack from the "17th NY Battery" historical photo, and I took the bottom left corner from the "Cold Harbor VA" historical photo. I added the number "1451" from the Library of Congress photo "Lewis C. Hunt, Col. 67th Ohio" to the top right side of my photo to incorporate the year that the photo was taken. You can see the year more clearly in the GIF than you can in the JPEG.

Old is the new again - Sanura Ezeagu

 I centered my piece around witnessing major events in US history. I thought it would be fun and help my curiosity on how it would feel to be apart of something so big.

First I started with an image from the Library of congress. On there I found an image about the first plane in NC. I then added a picture of me and a cat (not mine) for a little comedy touch. I tried to math the tone of the photo and add textures to make the image interesting and time appropriate.b

Old is New Again- Madyson Young

I wanted to keep mine traditional yet a bit modernized at the same time. I was thinking of the candid photos I would often see along with people usually keeping a straight face in photos from that time. I wanted it to have a laid-back atmosphere while maintaining a sense of sophistication. With that, I distressed the image a lot with the custom brushes, as well as incorporating textures from my parents driveway which luckily, had cracks in it that gave a defined scratch look. Incorporating something from the library of congress was challenging only because I am indecisive and didn’t know which I should choose, but I finally chose the frame in my finalized version, which goes along with the colors. I originally didn’t have as much blemishes with the fear of adding too much, but I think in this case, the more blemishes the better it looked.

Old is New Again ~ Kimberly Ballinger

                                         Man's Best Friends

For my project I wanted to keep it simple as if it was just a moment of time where everything was calm and relaxed.  

I started with the base image of my daughter's dog Selene standing and resting in between zoomies in their back yard. I then added my own cat Finley just because he is my buddy and is always cleaning in the funniest ways so I thought it would be a nice light-hearted addition. 

I then used elements from four different photos from The Library of Congress, the main being the tent with President Lincoln and General McClellan. I liked having the seriousness of Lincoln and the General juxtaposed with two companion animals. It speaks to the basic idealization that dogs and cats have been by our sides for such a long time, even during difficult periods.

I decided to stick with black and white versus adding a sepia tone to align with the images I used for inspiration.

                                                                           -Kim

Deconstructive Notion of Beauty

 Old is New Again - Christi Montes

 For this project, I chose to pick a topic related to the past and the present. This topic can pertain to many subjects outside of my point of view. I decided to reflect on the deconstructive notion of beauty, specifically to society and the past. While thinking of a more profound concept for this project, it would be perfect to relate it to my Latino culture. 

Being Latina and Central American, we have traditional dances; within this dance, the girls usually braid their hair with a ribbon, and if they want to add flowers, they have beautifully made dresses for this special occasion.

    As you can see from this picture, this is precisely what I am wearing. However, you can notice that half of my face has lipstick on, and half of my hair is down. Speaking on the deconstructed notion of beauty, I wanted to look at the norms of what society may

deem as beautiful: long hair, always makeup on, eyebrows down, etc. I admire this portrait because it shows that both sides can be charming. Applying the word deconstruction aims to reveal and question assumptions and structures that underlie our understanding of beauty. This piece can encourage a more nuanced and critical exploration of aesthetic values, acknowledging the diversity and fluidity of beauty across different perspectives and contexts. I mainly used Images from the Library of Congress to add texture to my piece. Knowing that texture is important, I allowed these textures to inspire me to create my brushes to achieve this texture more.

"Brianne With an E" (Old is New Again) - Brianne Schriever

The concept for my interpretation of the Old is New Again project is inspired by the visuals from the 1985 film series Anne of Green Gables which was set in the late 19th century. The series was later turned into a Netflix series known as Anne with an E. Anne was an unconventional and energetic girl for the time period she lived in, so I decided to take an unorthodox approach to my imagery. I wanted to create a scene that felt a bit more free-spirited and natural than the portraits taken during the mid to late 1800s, while also keeping elements of the time period in the scenery. I put together a picnic set with antique dishes, a basket full of flowers and myself reading a book as the main subject. In addition to the details created by the brushes in Photoshop, to push the narrative of the time period I incorporated the imagery in the background and the edge of a photo on the left side from the Library Of Congress.

 

"Dream Against the Reality"- Jazmine Chance

 Old is New Again: Dream Against the Reality

When first coming about this project, I was still determining what I wanted to do as a concept. But when I started shooting some pictures and doing some research, I realized I wanted my concept to explain more of the history of African American culture during the period when wet collodians were rarely popular (1850s). 

During this time period, African American artists were faced with many challenges due to racism and discrimination. So when it came to men and women of this culture, anything out of the norm that gives the idea that African Americans have higher standards than what society portrays falls into an unjust category. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made it dangerous for enslaved and free African Americans to pursue artistic careers as they could be captured and returned to slavery.

I created a narrative complex of the mindset of slavery where it is the dream versus the reality status that society pictures African Americans of this period. The images that I used from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Catalog are the border around the frame, the landscape, and the figures in the back to give the idea of being in that time period and what artists would dream to do versus what is actually true. She stares into the dreams of a traditional artist with print works in the most fashionable attire of the highest status an African American can have but still lives in a home where she is in bad living conditions. 

Old is New Again Dominique Rodriguez

The overall concept was to have the viewer question how the photo was taken. To show the opposite of this assignment, to reveal the new as the old. To have the two different cameras in one photo, but to also highlight the 4x5 camera’s equipment such as metal plates, glass, and the holders for the plates. And the irony of having the 4 x 5 camera and myself with a digital camera in the background in a mirror, reflecting back. Some elements from the Library of Congress are the crack in the upper right corner, the frame around the whole image, and the two edges that add texture under the frame around the corners. In total, I used four different images from the Library of Congress.

 

"I've Seen a Ghost" - Zoe Turner (Old is New Again)

 

For my wet plate collodion project, I decided to play on how photography was (and still is) a huge tool for spiritualism and paranormal investigation. As someone who is a ghost believer but skeptic of most photographic "proof" of ghosts, I thought it would be kind of humorous to go for a classic sheet ghost figure. And, of course, the added bonus of a ghost dog, Cider, who has shed his ghost sheet momentarily to share his fluffiness with the world. (AKA Cider did not enjoy having a sheet put on him, but he's still absolutely adorable.) I photographed on a one second exposure in order to capture some swaying and give the figure a nice blur effect... and Cider was miraculously still.  

The elements I incorporated in order to give this image a wet plate feel were two borders appropriated from LOC images (here and here.) I also drew inspiration from how photographers would write on the glass plates with the date and/or notes about the photo. As photographers these days, we don't often get our signature directly on the photograph (it's usually underneath or on the back) so I decided to take advantage of that. The last element I wanted to incorporate, besides the blotches/blemishes of chemistry, was the cracked glass. I think it adds an interesting dynamic/aesthetic to the overall image. 

Old is New Again - Julien Pozo

Personally, I just wanted to go for a simple and straight forward recreation of the effects often found on Wet Plate Collodion photographs. I don't think they're perfect and that's the point so I wasn't scared to add as much wear and tear as possible as the process is very volatile and tedious and reflects a very imperfect kind of result yet also crystal clear at times. As for what was collected and used from the Library of Congress, I had found a Civil War image that had some nice edges that were torn or damaged in the wet plate collodion process and there I wanted to use it since my overall composition for the original image was very centered and direct and so I thought the portion that I had incorporated from the LOC piece framed the very center focused composition I had within my portrait that I took and therefore complemented it very well in some ways. Overall a fun process!

Pearl of the Orient- Jonah Sanderson

For this project, I chose to composite an image that regarded the Western world's history of stereotyping different cultures and groups of people. In this image, I referenced the period's studio sittings with random objects such as Southeast Asian tropical plants, a Chinese lion statue, and a poster for herbal medicine. The purpose of this composition is to call to the practice of stereotyping in history as I represent my Filipino culture in my attire, the barong tagalog, but am surrounded by objects that do not quite fit my own heritage. The expression is meant to convey a sense of amusement as the subject understands the ignorance of the random props. We see examples of this in wet plates when we look to the work of Edward S. Curtis in his book, The North American Indian, where native people are presented in stereotypical and often arbitrary costumes for their own culture. I lifted the cracked plate in the top left from the Library of Congress and used stock images for the Fu Dog and Chinese calligraphy poster.

 

Old is New Again (Troy Vong Nguyen)

 

For my image, I wanted to explore landscapes and states of distress based on the environmental effects that golf courses leave on natural habitats. I took a photo of a golf course that was in my neighborhood and added in images from the Library of Congress that included large distressed states of the wet plates and composited them into the image as a way of conveying the harmful effects and damage to the natural environment from golf courses. 

Picture Day (Savannah DeMao)

As a kid I truly despised school picture day, and because of this I look unenthused and awkwardly dressed in all my grade-school yearbook photos. I took this assignment as an opportunity to recreate my lackluster portraits, of course in the essence of a wet collodion and an older me. I transcended time with the image treatment as well as my physical position and added dress. I used two items from the Library of Congress. One of a vintage print, which I blurred and manipulated to create an aged backdrop somewhat resembling that of the ones I remember staring blankly at while standing in line waiting for my turn, and another of a wet collodion that I scavenged the best of its imperfections from and included them in my portrait. 

Wandering to Valinor (by Suzanne Voigt)

 

During the 3^rd age of Middle Earth, in J.R.R. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam come across a camp of Wood Elves who are leaving Middle Earth on their way home to Valinor. Having never seen elves before, Frodo and Sam are mesmerized by them and capture this scene of the elves and their camp within the forest near Woodhall. This of course is ironic since there were no cameras during the 3^rd age of Middle Earth. For this fictional, digital wet collodion image, one wood elf is casually posing around the campfire while three others are going about their daily routines within the camp. The concept of my image stems from my current work around “wanderings” and how one can mature in their personal self-discovery by engaging in wanderings of many kinds. For many people, wandering can seem like a daunting or frightening prospect, however, with positivity and a strategic structure in place, wise wanderings go from concepts of treacherousness to an extraordinary mosaic of adventures.

 

To make this image look very old and worn, I decided to use aspects of a variety of images from the Library of Congress including a campfire scene by Highsmith, President Lincoln’s box at Ford Theatre, 17^th NY Battery, and an Unknown Union Volunteer in the Civil War. To capture the subject matter for my image, I photographed myself in a variety of elvish capes and poses in the woods around my home using my Sony a7IV camera and 24-70mm lens. I also incorporated a few images from previously attended Renaissance festivals, which included the two tents and horse. For my apertures, I used a range of f/2.5 – f/5.6 to get a wide variety of focal depths. Finally, I incorporated some textured brushes to increase the blotches, blur, scratches, etc. around the figures and edging of the image. In all, this image is made up of 26 individual Photoshop layers.

Adrienne Ray- Old is New Again

I wanted to make something that related to the nineteenth century and my childhood. The parlor background came from the Library of Congress. It relates because ice cream parlors gained popularity in this century with the development of industrial refrigeration. I chose the subject based on my love of ice cream and other sugary foods. Even though cartoons hadn't been invented yet, I thought it would be humorous to photograph this SpongeBob popsicle. I used textures from creative cloud, blur effects, noise and my own watercolor texture to edit.