Wish You Were Here, 2026 –
Wish You Were Here explores modern image culture and how popular places – whether encountered through travel, folklore, or digital circulation – carry traces of collective longing for connection, meaning, and ritual. I create digital collages utilizing a plethora of social media photographs from the most-tagged locations in each U.S. state. In this experimental practice, I reimagine and recontextualize this ubiquitous source material from publicly available archives into unique works. The collages are then translated into photographic glass plates, known as ambrotypes, by employing an analog wet-plate collodion process. The resulting images are backed by gradients derived from recurring colors in the source photographs, and appear as seamless scenes from afar, but dissolve into glitches, layers, and ghostly echoes upon closer inspection.

The tension between analog and digital, single image and media stream, interrogates how contemporary imaging technologies blur public and private realms, shaping collective visual narratives that celebrate, mediate, and perpetuate human experience. In particular, this project asks how participants on social media platforms interpret recurring themes and negotiate personal experience in the physical world through the creation, dissemination and consumption of digital images. The source photographs themselves embody a collective urge to visit celebrated places, and to document and share the experience within an ever-growing public archive. By turning personal pilgrimages into public signposts, the images map a shared appetite for the sublime, while transforming individual travel into a communal visual language.

#grandcanyon(AZ), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 20” x 24” x 3”

#grandcanyon(AZ)(detail of Ambrotype), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 20” x 24” x 3”

#glaciernationalpark(MT), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 24” x 20” x 3”

#glaciernationalpark(MT) (detail of Ambrotype), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 24” x 20” x 3”

#yellowstone(WY), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 20” x 24” x 3”

#yellowstone(WY), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 20” x 24” x 3”

#arches(UT), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 24” x 20” x 3”

#arches(UT) (detail of Ambrotype), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 20” x 24” x 3”

#gulfshores(AL), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 20” x 24” x 3”

#gulfshores(AL), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 20” x 24” x 3”

#mtrushmore(SD), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 19” x 23” x 3”

#mtrushmore(SD) (detail of Ambrotype), Ambrotype, Archival Pigment Print, White Ash, 2026, 19” x 23” x 3”