Making portraits with an 8x10 camera and the wet plate collodion process is like stepping into another time. There's a kind of alchemy to it, it’s unpredictable, raw, and hauntingly beautiful. The end result is something almost sacred—rife with artifact, a portrait rendered on black glass, holding time and soul in its stillness. Each one feels like a nod to the past, fragile yet enduring.

There's a vulnerability in this process. It often exposes something deeper in the subject, something unguarded that only a timeless technique can capture. You can see the weight of their ancestry, a glimpse into the lives that came before them, as if the past rises up through the shadows on the glass. Perhaps it’s the West that runs through in my blood, the wildness of it, inherited from my own ancestry. The frontier is part me, and somehow, it finds its way into these portraits, where history and art intersect.

—eo