Relievo ambrotype (Glass Wet-plate collodion layered over Digital Photograph)

These images are relievo ambrotypes. They layer two photographs to create a single image. The top ambrotype photograph is created on glass using the wet-plate collodion process, while the bottom image is a digital image. The two images merge to produce a single relievo ambrotype.
As sentient beings, we experience the world through our senses. But how do we make meaning of those senses? Do we all interpret those same sensations in the same way? Even more challenging, how do we communicate our personal experience, our interpretation, of those sensations to others? This mystery of consciousness, the mind’s individual interpretation of senses, especially visual, is at the core of this work. How much of what we think we see is “actually there,” and how much does our consciousness influence what we see as actually there, based on our expectations and experience? What interests me is not necessarily how each individual photograph but what happens in the blank space in between the photographs?