The Darkroom is a video and sound installation composed of nineteenth-century cabinet card portraits of women. Suspended in two grids, the photographs become a surface for the projection of the artist’s body in performance. Light passes between the cards, casting structural shadows into the surrounding space.

The work considers traditions of the passive female subject within lens-based media, using self-directed performance to activate the static archive. Expressive and continually transforming, the projected body asserts agency against a visual history that has rendered women as objects for consumption. In contrast, the fence-like shadows evoke the structures that have historically controlled women’s representation while foregrounding the absent identities and voices of the women photographed.

While the names of many of the women have been lost to time, the photographic studios that produced their images often remain imprinted on the cards. This imbalance between the named image-maker and the anonymous subject underscores the systems of authorship and representation at the center of the work.

Accompanying the installation is an evolving photographic archive that seeks to identify the women and recover their stories. Through research and crowdsourcing, viewers are invited to contribute information that may reconnect the photographs with the lives they once represented.

 

www.cabinetcardarchive.com

 

This project is supported in part by the Maine Arts Commission, which receives support in
part from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.