Angola, Indiana, from Absence Portraits—a really great little project
Lissa Rivera
-“Vernacular photographs have intrinsic qualities that shape our perception of an image and inform our understanding of its time, place, and socioeconomic circumstances. By literally foregrounding the background of a series of nineteenth century portraits I am attempting to expose the dynamics underlying the creation of these images. I decided to digitally remove the person from old cabinet card portraits to reveal the artificial environment created by the photographer to heighten the perception of the subject.”



