Susan
Evans

Natives: ambrotypes from the digital frontier

Nearly 160 years after the first ambrotypists traveled in wagons and photograph those living on the fringes of civilization, I travel the new frontier of online communities, photographing those paving the way. While the inhabitants of these non-physical communities and games do not exist physically, they are often able to manipulate and control their online incarnation: creating an abject presence of themselves. This project creates both a tangibility and history to the 'lives' of these inhabitants who, by design, do not know or have either. The ambrotype images make a tangible manifestation of the intangible persona while simultaneously showing the death of that moment.