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Copper-plate Photogravure and embossing on handmade paper
2020
Commissioned by Jacob Lawrence Gallery in Seattle, WA for the Lux Aeterna exhibition in 2021,“In 2020 I purchased and downloaded one of my father’s mugshots from a third-party criminal-search website for $29.99. My father died in 2009.” is a photogravure series that engages photography’s historical relationship to criminology and mass reproduction in newsprint. The photogravure is an early photomechanical invention that burns a negative onto a copper plate to be printed, which is akin to biometric data used in turn-of-the-century criminal identification. This iteration of “In 2020...” converts the artist’s father’s digital mugshot to this early analog image praxis. The conversion into analog material is an effort to disrupt the mugshot’s permanence and reproducibility in the digital landscape. Formerly incarcerated individuals are subjected to after-life sentences through images produced and perpetuated online. The impression-making of both the photogravure and the title’s embossed text reverse the moment where analog image practice translates to digital by making a finite negative and copy.