Teletype Calendar

The revival of historical photographic processes parallel other movements in our society that promote slowing down and connecting with one another. Ideas of slow food and trekking to work permeate online social networking groups, outlining a trend within society to use new technological developments to promote simple lifestyle choices. In a world of increasingly greater dependence on digital technologies to communicate with and express ourselves to others, the relationship of the analog to the digital has grown to represent a difference between the tactile and virtual. It is all too apparent that humans, though they are analog organisms, are being consumed by a tech-savvy world. Photography has always spanned the distance between science and art and, with the advent of digital and the rebirth of historical processes, photography can bridge our desires for expedience and control with the very discoveries, accidents, and flaws that enrich a human society. In my latest body of work, Teletypes, I strike a balance between these divergent paradigms by making ambrotypes of individuals using Skype's videochat interface. Arranged to represent the electronic paths and distances between participants, these prints form an installation that transforms the virtual ties of individuals into a complex of tangible connections.