Untitled

This series grows out of an interest in how the natural world can produce objects of beauty even though there is no reason for its production. The beauty of shells appears to have no function in the life of the mollusk. There creatures have limited visual systems, so the visual opulence of their shells presents an evolutionary riddle. I work in wet plate/tintype because I love the singularity of the images, and the impossibility of producing identical images. In this regard, the process reflects the diversity of the natural world where a given species can produce endless variations on that species’ base characteristics.