Lost. Broken. Found. Fixed.

Unwanted, discarded, no longer useful. There is something that speaks to me from these objects. These “things” are collected from boxes destined for the trash in the hallways of the Art Department, from the streets and alley-ways of Columbus during my time living here. I don’t collect everything I find, only the objects that beckon to be saved, fixed, wanted, and loved again. What is it that draws me to them? Why do I feel compelled to collect and immortalize detritus? I am not sure I can explain this impulse, other than to say that I have always anthropomorphized inanimate objects. By collecting and photographing these found treasures using the wet-plate collodion process, and then embarking on the time consuming process of burnishing and hand tinting the glass plates, I imbue a specialness to things tossed aside, to things nobody wants. I elevate something discarded to something precious. Images are hand-tinted and burnished ruby ambrotypes. They are either 2"x3", or half plates, (5 ½ “ x 4 ¼ “).