by Lainey Koch
Kayla Massey's artist talk (presented by Focus Photography Club) was a great way to further my understanding of this graduate student and instructor's thesis project. Her work has a strong focus on the personal and it's intersection with the political. At the age of 21, Massey was diagnosed with a serious illness that required a lengthy hospitalization. She used her time to create a series about the "unspoken nature of death in the United States".
The work she is making as a graduate student uses the wet plate collodion process to create portraits of women. The conceptual focus on this work is based in sexual assault, and how survivors face erasure in the media and their daily lives. All of her subjects are covered in flour, and photographed in a studio setting. These portraits are then enlarged onto a bronze mirror utilizing the wet plate collodion process. A total of over fifty photographs will be produced for her final exhibition.
Massey's work explores themes that I am also interested in and I was inspired to see such an unique use of a historical process involved with her concept. To see the process of conceptual development she followed was an inspiring look into an artist's process.
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