A huge thank you to Guest Editor and photographer Kat Kiernan who shared the work of photographers working in alternative processes this week.

Salt prints were first invented by Henry Fox Tablot and are known for their soft highlights and unique faint purple tone. The process involves hand coating a sheet of paper with a mixture of distilled water and table salt (sodium chloride), and then making it light sensitive by applying silver nitrate. A negative is then contact printed onto the paper and exposed to UV light.

Though using a traditional medium, Danielle Ezzo’s work pushes the boundaries of traditional photography by drawing geometric shapes directly onto her negatives. The line drawings in this medium pay homage to Henry Fox Talbot’s development of the process through his failed drawings with a camera lucida. She creates visual connections that connect and overlap her subjects to represent complex relationships. The camera-less constellations use just the line drawings in salt to further highlight their complexity.

Kindred Systems hopes to pave the way for a fresh discourse about the long outdated methods of how we socially define kin, yet all the while, systemically reevaluating the constructs of ‘family’. Derived from the term, “kinship system”, the work looks to reanalyze and contextualize personal interconnectivity in a modern era where the definitions of family and friends are blurred. How have these relationships been affected by shifts in modern sexual, social, and political change? From the legalizing of same sex marriage to the nation’s growing curiosity of non-monogamy, and the increasing divorce rate which beckons the reconfiguration of the standard family model. Where does this leave how we look at each other on an individual level? The historical photo process used playfully satirizes by drawing connections to the antiquity of the pseudo-sciences, as well as, offering alternatives in rethinking how we love.

Danielle Ezzo is an photographer and artist interested in history, science, and abstraction. Her work continually investigates their possible intersections. She focuses on the process of image-making and is less preoccupied with the representational attributes of photography, in hopes to push the bounds of what is considered photographic and celebrate all the wonderfully unique elements of the photographic continuum. She has received praise from Kiernan Gallery (VA), Rayko Photo Center (SF) , Soho Photo (NY), and written about in NYArts magazine. She’s exhibited her work nationally at such galleries as Daniel Cooney Fine Art (NY), Wall-space Gallery (Santa Barbra and Seattle), Gormley Gallery (MD), and Galerie Protege (NY). This year, Danielle was nominated for the NYFA Fellowship Award and one of her cameraless images was acquired by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. She currently lives in New York and is studying for MFA candidacy in Boston at the Lesley College of Art & Design.