My first and long-enduring interest in photography, cultivated in graduate school in the 1980s, has been a fascination with studying materials used in photography, but not necessarily to create prints in a traditional manner.

The Vintage Silver series is a return to my fascination with materials and how they can influence an image. The series is my own language of the camera-less lens. I work with vintage dry plates that would have fallen into history unless reawakened after decades spent on dusty basement shelves or in derelict barns.

Would these unexposed antique plates with a custard-colored emulsion reveal an image? If so, how could I manipulate the plates using light and water instead of a camera? Could a one-hundred-year-old plate still produce an image?

Handling and holding these fragile plates, I detect a subtle gracefulness and a feeling of undiscovered elegance waiting to be discovered.