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Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
The "Bathtub Ring" of Lake Mead is more than an environmental marker; it is a countdown. I took my large format camera to the receding shoreline to document a "Farewell Collodion Wet Plate" of a landscape in collapse, uncovering a hidden driver behind the disappearing water: the rise of the machines.
Capturing the Ephemeral I chose to document this crisis using Wet Plate Collodion photography. There is a haunting irony in using a 19th-century process—requiring physical water and silver—to capture a landscape being deleted by invisible data. Each "Farewell Plate" was coated, exposed, and developed on the shores of Lake Mead, capturing a permanent record of a disappearing world on glass and metal.
There is a physical loop in this project that the digital world can’t replicate. To develop these plates, I drew water directly from the receding shoreline of Lake Mead. I filtered out the silt, mixed my chemistry in the back of the truck, and used the lake's own molecules to bring the image to life. The 'Bathtub Ring' you see on the plate isn't just a picture of minerals; it was created by them. This plate was developed using the very water it depicts. When this lake is gone, the only thing left of its physical presence will be the silver on this glass.
From the negative scan of the plate these are limited edition giclee prints.
Please visit my YouTube Channel to find out more about the making of this image in the episode:
The "Bathtub Ring" of Lake Mead is more than an environmental marker; it is a countdown. I took my large format camera to the receding shoreline to document a "Farewell Collodion Wet Plate" of a landscape in collapse, uncovering a hidden driver behind the disappearing water: the rise of the machines.
Capturing the Ephemeral I chose to document this crisis using Wet Plate Collodion photography. There is a haunting irony in using a 19th-century process—requiring physical water and silver—to capture a landscape being deleted by invisible data. Each "Farewell Plate" was coated, exposed, and developed on the shores of Lake Mead, capturing a permanent record of a disappearing world on glass and metal.
There is a physical loop in this project that the digital world can’t replicate. To develop these plates, I drew water directly from the receding shoreline of Lake Mead. I filtered out the silt, mixed my chemistry in the back of the truck, and used the lake's own molecules to bring the image to life. The 'Bathtub Ring' you see on the plate isn't just a picture of minerals; it was created by them. This plate was developed using the very water it depicts. When this lake is gone, the only thing left of its physical presence will be the silver on this glass.
From the negative scan of the plate these are limited edition giclee prints.
Please visit my YouTube Channel to find out more about the making of this image in the episode: