Valley of Shadows
‘Valley of Shadows’ is a series of wet-plate collodions made by re-photographing appropriated infrared images of migrants and refugees crossing the border into the United States. This translation from digital image to 19th century photographic process is intended to expose the colonialist worldview historically embedded in digital imaging. The use of wet-plate collodion transforms infrared surveillance images taken by Border Patrol and border-watching vigilantes into unique objects that resemble the landscape photography made during the period of westward expansion in the United States. In so doing the migrants and refugees of today become a visual reverberation of the American migrations of another era.