Keliy Anderson-Staley
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Off The Grid
Tintype Portraits
Tintype Landscapes
Archive of Earlier Work
<span class="text"><font color="#666666" class="text"> <p> </p> <link href="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List" /> <p> </p> <table align="center" bgcolor="#ffffff" border="0" cellpadding="12" cellspacing="1" style="border-top-color: rgb(211, 211, 211); border-right-color: rgb(211, 211, 211); border-bottom-color: rgb(211, 211, 211); border-left-color: rgb(211, 211, 211); border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: dotted; border-right-style: dotted; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-left-style: dotted; "> <tbody> <tr> <td style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; border-top-color: rgb(211, 211, 211); border-right-color: rgb(211, 211, 211); border-bottom-color: rgb(211, 211, 211); border-left-color: rgb(211, 211, 211); border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: dotted; border-right-style: dotted; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-left-style: dotted; "> <p style="text-align: center; "> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-size: xx-large; "><span style="font-family: Verdana; ">Off the Grid</span></span></span></p> <h1 style="text-align: center; "> <span style="color: rgb(255, 204, 153); "><span style="font-size: xx-large; "><span style="font-family: Arial; "><img alt="" height="355" src="/users/KeliyAndersonStaley4060/docs/Image/A-Frame Outhouse.jpg" width="450" /><br /> </span></span></span></h1> <div> <span style="color: rgb(255, 204, 153); "><span style="font-size: xx-large; "><span style="font-family: Arial; "><br /> </span></span></span></div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; text-align: center; "> <span style="font-size:22px;"><span style="color:#800000;"><span _fck_bookmark="1" style="display: none; "> </span> </span></span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Off the Grid </i>is a study of thirty families living in Maine without electricity, plumbing or phones. Scattered throughout the Maine woods, these homes are disconnected from the grid of wires and media that bind distant Americans together. Although they have all rejected aspects of the modern world, their beliefs and commitments vary widely—ranging from environmentalism to evangelism to anarchism. Yet the families living in these homes—and on the occasional commune—form a sort of makeshift community. I see this project as an examination of how homes become an expression of personal ideology. I am especially interested in depicting the relationships between people and their homes through the mundane details of the material worlds they have built around themselves.</span></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;">Tensions within families, between generations, and between individuals and larger communities are among the psychological themes explored. I am especially interested in capturing the complex attitudes of the children as they echo their parent’s pride while still exhibiting some frustration and discontentment. The new wave of homesteaders in their 20s and 30s is also surprisingly strong. Although their gardens and homes look similar to the ones built in the 70s and early 80s, there is a different atmosphere. At the same time, they are still bathing their children in the same metal tubs I remember using as a kid.</span></span></span><o:p></o:p></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;"><br /> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;">I am drawn to the beauty of the crude, hand-made structures, and I have worked to develop a photographic style appropriate for representing them. For these families, their home is their masterpiece. Many of their systems are improvised and idiosyncratic, developed over many years. As many of the subjects use the sun as their primary energy source, my photographs are concerned with natural light. Gardens, wood, ice, and the forest run through the project as unifying visual motifs. Captured across the four seasons, there is also a cyclical structure to the project.<br /> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;"><br /> </span></span></span></p> <p> <span _fck_bookmark="1" style="display: none; "> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I grew up in one of these log cabins, and this project started with my own family. Returning to photograph the area where I grew up, I am aware of being both an insider and an outsider. I do not want to over-romanticize this way of living or over-estimate the role it might play in resolving the global environmental crisis. I feel it is important to engage in discussions about the way we live and how our domestic lives impact the broader world. My intention is not to judge or present these families in an ironic light. Many of the families in this project describe happiness, even as they recount the daily struggles of survival. It is this mix of attitudes that I am seeking to capture. </span> </span></span></span></p> <p> <span _fck_bookmark="1" style="display: none; "> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;"><br /> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="color:#8b4513;"><span class="Apple-style-span">This project is printed in editions of 5 at 30x40" and 20x24" and 16x20". </span></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span> </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"> _____________________ <span style="background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><br /> </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">-americans:</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-large;"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">Contemporary Collodion Portraits </span><br /> </span></span></p> <p> </p> <h1 style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-size: xx-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><img alt="" height="360" src="/users/KeliyAndersonStaley4060/docs/Image//Jessica.jpg" width="279" /><br /> </span></span></h1> <p> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This series of portraits seeks to raise questions about photographic representation and the ways photography has shaped our conceptions of identity since its earliest days. My interest lies in finding the unique visual markers of personality and in portraying faces that reflect the diversity of contemporary America. Each image in this project presents a face and is titled simply with a first name. Although the heritage of the individual may be inferred from assumptions we make about features and costumes, the descriptive language that might have been attached to such images in the past is deliberately absent. The viewer is therefore forced to suspend the kind of thinking that would traditionally assist in decoding these images in the context of American identity politics. </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /> </span></span></span></p> <p> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I use the nineteenth-century wet plate collodion photographic process, the same photo process that was used when many believed that photography could scientifically record and catalogue the racial or ethnic identity of a person. Like the photographers of the 1850s, I use hand-poured chemistry that I mix myself, brass lenses, and wooden view cameras to expose positive images directly onto blackened metal and glass. Requiring extended exposure times, the process offers the possibility of looking beyond temporary aspects of personality. One must sit still for almost a minute as the features of the face itself and not just passing emotions are recorded and as the extended moment is preserved in the eyes. My portraits present a dialectic between similarity and difference and explore the way individuals resist easy categorization.</span></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p style="text-align: center; "> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">______________________________________</span></span></span></p> <p> <span style="color:#8b4513;"> </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">About the Wet Plate Collodion Process</span></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <img alt="" src="/users/KeliyAndersonStaley4060/Image//pouring-collodion1.jpg" style="width: 427px; height: 284px;" /></p> <p style="text-align: left;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">The wet plate collodion process was the leading mode of photography in the 1850's and 1860's. Ambrotypes are positive images exposed onto blackened glass; tintypes are made the same way but onto blackened metal. The finished plates are one-of-a-kind three-dimensional objects.</span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /> <br /> </span><img alt="" src="/users/KeliyAndersonStaley4060/Image//portrait-shooting.jpg" style="width: 476px; height: 333px;" /></p> <p> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The wet plate process requires precisely mixed homemade chemistry: collodion, silver bath, fixer, and varnish. The chemistry that is poured onto each glass or metal plate is less sensitive to light than film, forcing exposures to be longer than one can hold an unwavering smile, hence the serious expressions. Often a head brace is necessary to hold a pose. The sitter must focus intently on the camera while the photographer sensitizes, exposes,and develops the image before the plate dries. The chemical properties of the process allow each image to be seen minutes after the exposure is made.</span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <img alt="" src="/users/KeliyAndersonStaley4060/Image//karl-almost-pos.jpg" style="width: 473px; height: 400px;" /></p> <p style="text-align: left;"> </p> <p style="text-align: left;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">I use wooden view cameras and original 19th-Century brass lenses with large apertures to create a picture plane that allows only a small part of the subject to be in focus</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">—</span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">a person's eye, face, or hands. Ambrotypes and tintypes are in many ways anti-snapshot: a face over many seconds or even minutes is exposed, as an extended moment is compressed onto a single plate. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">To schedule a portrait session, please visit my portrait website: </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.tintypeportraits.com"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">www.tintypeportraits.com</span></a></span></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left;"> <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></span> </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#8b4513;"> All images of process by Leigh Van Duzer.</span></p> <p> </p> <p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; "><br /> </span></p> </font></span><br> <h1> color photographs, maine, off the grid, northern Maine, living in the woods, cabins, alternative energy, solar energy, agriculture, farms, earthways school, mooseriver handicrafts, crafts, solar, solar panels, guilford, dover foxcroft, wellington, jackman, temple, abbott, keliy , kelly anderson, staley, canoes, off-grid, living off grid, outhouse</h1>
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Keliy Anderson-Staley 2010
