Gabriel Kenny-Ryder

This final project is a display of three portrait installations, exploring the power and materiality of portraiture and the photographic image in the modern technological era.

The portraits are 1:1 scale and use the time-intensive and performative Wet Plate Collodion technique to create photographic 'imprints' of the subjects on semi-transparent bronze glass, which lie somewhere between positive and negative images. The installation walls create spaces for direct confrontation with the sitters. The viewer is caught in the middle of a conversation in 'Double Portrait', is surrounded by uncanny repetition in 'Three-Part Portrait', or trapped inside the sitter's head in 'Two-Part Portrait'.

These installations provide a relational environment to interrogate the nature of the image and the histories that photographs can hide or create.