Old is New Again - Estera Rasek

 

 

 

My idea was to show how the sources we use to satisfy our thirst have changed over the years. I wanted to create an ironic photo by placing a modern, unhealthy energy drink in a setting that shows a more traditional way of living. I’m holding the energy drink while a natural well and a cow providing fresh milk can be seen behind me. The can is also the sharpest element in the photograph, which helps draw the viewer’s attention to it.

I wanted my appearance to represent a woman from the past and connect the photograph to my Polish and Slavic background. That’s why I wore a simple dress, braided my hair into two braids and stood barefoot. In the background, I used a Polish windmill from the Library of Congress as another cultural element.

I also tried to follow the Rule of Thirds when creating the composition. Overall, this work is meant to be a form of social commentary on our modern lifestyle. By contrasting natural sources of food and drink with an unhealthy energy drink, I wanted to encourage the viewer to think about their choices and consider a more natural way of living.

 

Links: 
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/item/2019711431/ (cow)
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017677220/ (windmill)
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2012646920/ (scratch) 

Old is New - Sage Lewis

My idea was to specifically do a wet plate collodion portrait of my mother and me, the past and the present. I wanted it to look as if we were the same person but noticeably different. I based this off of how often people have confused me for her before. I constantly strive to be like her, as she's my biggest role model, and her influence is why I took my academics seriously and learned to pursue success. Back during the 1900's Black Americans could rarely attend college, let alone black women. My mother would actually graduated from college when she was pregnant with me at 37. Now I am a college junior because I started college classes at 17, an entire 2 decades younger. For the 2 of us to be able to 


She's been my biggest cheerleader, and I feel proud to look so much like one of the people I love so much.

Links:

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/anedub/item/00651764/ 

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017896046/

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95507126/

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/gld/item/2010647770/

Old is New Again - Noelle Greene

 

My concept is based around how these old photographs inherently stand as very static and unchanging captures of a person's entire identity. Given how infrequent these would be, many of these old photos serve to create one singular vision of how these people look when the truth is that an entire person can't be distilled into one image. I wanted to capture this through the slow shutter speed method and essentially obscure my own face, figure, and identity to create a more dynamic and hard to pin down identity. In a way, this feels inherently personal in that I am constantly changing from one moment to the next and given how long these photos would take, I've tightened this sense of change by implying that so much change is happening over the course of a short period.

I used the border from an old photograph off the library of congress:

https://www.loc.gov/item/vt0145/

As well as several textures I overlayed:

https://jooinn.com/img/get

https://www.needpix.com/photo/1479118/grunge-texture-grungetexture-wall-antique-vintage-retro-old-damaged

https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1100381

Old is New Again - Wrapping Technology in Collodion_Kyiah Vann

Old Is New Again 

For this work, I developed a concept that relied on a sense of irony. I used a picture of myself when I was a flower girl at six years old, and added an iPad to connect the past and present. I wanted to explore the friction between new-age digital dependency and historical permanence by creating an anachronistic contrast between the birth of photography and the height of the digital age. This project comments on how quickly our tools for capturing reality have evolved by rendering a modern memory through the lens of the historical collodion process. 

I utilized two images from The Library of Congress for the background and chair, removing the subjects from each photo and scaling them up for the composition. I blurred these images since they are farther away from the camera. 

Old is New Again - Cami Smith

For this project, I sought to comment on interracial marriage. As the wet plates I sourced from were primarily from World War I, I thought it was fitting that the war was one of the elements that made interracial marriage possible. This photograph was taken by me, with my husband and myself as the subjects. We got married this past summer, and I used my actual wedding dress as the wardrobe for me. This brought a contemporary element into the work. My husband wore a plain suit that could fit into any timeframe. During World War I and for a decent time afterwards, relationships between black and white Americans were not only frowned upon, but could lead to the death of those involved. It is baffling to consider how close in time that cultural norm was. Overall, this work reminds the viewer of that fact and further drives the point home with scratches across the piece, most prominently right between the subjects. A scratch also runs across the face of the man to emphasize the fact that he would be more likely to suffer consequences of an interracial relationship, simply due to his race. 

I sourced pieces from a few images.

The background came from this source: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/civwar/item/2018667369/

The large scratch across the image comes from this source: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018666106/

The curtain in the background comes from this source: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017893758/

 

Old is new again - Eli Lo

 

In this project, I attempted to turn this cannon in downtown Concord into a Civil War-style wet plate. Although the cannon was dated to be used during WW1, I saw that it was fitting for this assignment. I wanted a Civil War-era man posing in front of the cannon to give the sense that he had shot this cannon before it was placed there as a memorial. 

For this, I photographed the cannon and took a photo from the Library of Congress of a man standing next to a larger cannon.

Link to image: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/item/2012646729/

Old is New Again_Emily Farlow

The concept for my Digital Wet Plate came from seeing a photo of my late Paw-Paw. He didn't smile much in photos, but he did for this one because I was holding the camera. Paw-Paw was drafted in 1944. He was stationed in Kassel, Germany, and Belgium; he could have gone to Switzerland, but took the opportunity to come home instead. I was thinking about how Paw-Paw took off his military hat for his family hat, which is symbolized by the Mickey Mouse Santa Hat he's wearing.

I took the background, chair, and distressed elements from The Library of Congress photo gallery and placed Paw-Paw's army photo in a frame beside him. I experimented with the generative expand tool to create a table for his picture.