In the burning house (2024 ; today) is an ongoing series of trans tintypes. The current backlash against the queer community is alarming. The dominant discourse—at least in the media—tends to frame trans identity as a new phenomenon, as if collective memory had evaporated overnight. Once again, we are reminded of the importance of archives: so that we don’t have to constantly fight for the recognition—let alone the freedom—of our identities. It is under this sense of urgency, this necessity to bear witness, that I discovered wet plate collodion photography last summer.
By pouring a small amount of collodion (a cotton derivative) onto a glass or metal plate and then immersing it in a bath of silver nitrate, an image can appear—just as it did two hundred years ago. I am particularly drawn to this technique for its historical significance: it was the first photographic process truly accessible to the working class. As early as the 1850s, particularly in the United States, even the most ordinary worker could step into a studio and have their portrait taken on a metal plate, affirming their existence. These durable archives are what push the narrative of our lives forward, what infuse meaning into our present.
In a political climate where our rights stand on fragile ground, archiving our existences in a lasting way feels essential. Since November 2024, I have been inviting trans people to be photographed through the lens of my 8x10 camera. The studio becomes a space of resistance, a utopian place to share our stories, to stand in solidarity as a community that, too, deserves a history. Our memory is still difficult to trace: our archives are burned, anonymized, erased. So we create our own. And in this act, trans bodies emerge—silvered and enduring.