On A Wet Bough

2014
Hardcover
11 x 14 inches
144 pages
85 duotone plates
ISBN 978-1-939932-00-6 
Published by Waltz Books 

Photographs by Keliy Anderson-Staley
Essays by Geoffrey Batchen and Matthew Williams

ABOUT ON A WET BOUGH
This stunning monograph of tintype portraits is culled from an archive of hundreds taken over the last decade by Keliy Anderson-Staley. The long exposure time needed to make a tintype requires that the sitter remain as still as possible to produce a sharp image. As a result, the subjects of these tintypes often display an intense and guileless expression that immediately connects their faces to those of 19th-Century portraits. Stripped of the modern default behavior of smiling in front of a camera, these images, with all the exquisite detail afforded by the wet plate process, suggest an important rethinking of what it means to photograph and be photographed.

Anderson-Staley mixes and pours the emulsion for each plate on site shortly before a portrait is made. The process of hand-coating each piece leaves behind traces of the maker that are as beautifully and deeply embedded in the final image as the perceived identity of the subject. A number of portraits in the book were shot on site at The Print Center.

ABOUT KELIY ANDERSON-STALEY

Keily Anderson-Staley has exhibited her work for over a decade in solo and group exhibitions at institutions including The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia; the California Museum of Photography; and the Southeast Museum of Photography. Her work is in the collections of Portland Museum of Art, Maine; The Library of Congress; and Ceder Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa. She is represented by Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago.

ABOUT GEOFFREY BATCHEN

Geoffrey Batchen is a renowned art historian, teacher, curator, and author of classic texts including Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography; Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History; and Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance.

ABOUT MATTHEW WILLIAMS

Matthew Williams has a PhD in English from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and teaches British literature.