Amy Rockett-Todd “MANUS : ab.sum”

The exhibition  "MANUS : ab.sum"  is rendered using the 19th Century photographic process known as Wet Plate Collodion. The work deals with hand-made attributes of creating photographic images of our environment ... the building up, the habitation, and the abandonment of it ... and of nature reclaiming its place.

Drawing from a history of past studies in the Latin language, Amy uses Latin portfolio descriptors. Her latest work, MANUS (Latin for “hand”) presents a re-emergence of hands-on photographic processes, such as wet plate collodion, yet she enjoys marrying modern techniques with antiquated ones.  The imagery also follows a modern aesthetic, employing digital photo-manipulations of pieces of architecture and natural flora.  Using digital positives, Amy returns to the 1800s process for final output.  For select arrangements, a focus on the unique structural aspects of a particular building or site is translated into the final structural-relief tintype assemblage.