“Spirits in the Material World,” Stacy de la Rosa, 2015
I inherited from my great-grandmother her collection of Daguerreortypes – named after the man who invented and introduced the world’s first photographic process in 1839.
Endlessely fascinated by these haunting images, I would almost obsess over the people in the images – knowing that they were no longer living but these photos served as testament to their once having been here.
I am drawn to ghostly, gritty, black and white, ethereal aesthetics. This is the first in a series where I sit quietly as present observer inside a solid interior structure attempting to capture the spiritual startdust of human life as we we move and swirl at a a furious pace – reminding myself that like my inherited collection of Daguerrotypes, we are also ghosts, here one moment and gone the next.
This is beautiful, Stacy. I also obsess over photos of people I’ve never met, imagining their lives and wondering if they were fulfilled or left too soon.