Rebecca Sexton Larson

Rebecca Sexton Larson, from Tampa, Florida, USA, makes tintypes set in beautiful handmade cases. She also shows her hand-painted black and white pinholes and work in bromoils.
From: Tampa, Florida, USA.
Shows: Modern tintypes, Hand painted photographs, Pinholes, Salt prints.

Rebecca Sexton Larson is a Tampa (Florida, USA) based studio artist working with historic photographic processes. She graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree in Fine Arts and a degree in Mass Communications. She was awarded Florida Individual Artist Fellowships in 1998, 2002, and 2008. In 2006, she received an Artist Enhancement Grant from the State of Florida and, in 2005, was commissioned by the City of Tampa to be Photographer Laureate for a year. During the past 20 years, Sexton Larson has taught, lectured and exhibited work nationally at various arts institutions and organizations. Sexton Larson’s photographs are in numerous major collections throughout the country, including: Polaroid, Progressive Corporate Art, Graham Nash (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), Holland and Knight Law Firm, Polk Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts St. Pete and the Tampa Museum of Art.

Currently Sexton Larson is the Chief Curator at Art & History Museums-Maitland. Her museum experience includes The Tampa Museum of Art (curatorial and educational), the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland (Education Curator) and the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art (Associate Curator/Registrar).

“My current body of work was created using black and white silver prints produced from various types of pinhole cameras”

Contact

• Email: rslarson (at) mac.com
• Website

About the Hereafter project:

Original bromoil photographs by Rebecca Sexton Larson

As a hopeful artist in kindergarten, my teacher became distressed because I would always color with the black crayon. The teacher went as far as to notify my parents of their concern; one afternoon while making dinner, my mom asked me about my fascination with dark, drawings of landscapes and houses. Without blinking an eye I responded, “it is the only crayon they [my classmates] will let me have.” Crisis averted, I eventually would go on to use the entire Crayola 64 box (with sharpener) along with colorful paint, pencils, chalk and other materials.

As an adult, the color began to quietly fade from my photographic work when I became caregiver for my aging parents. Caring for my mom who had a stroke and a father in the early stages of Alzheimer’s put into perspective the fragileness and shortness of life we all will face. Hereafter body of work echoes the contemplation of the impermanence of life. Frequently dark and isolated, the photographs draw the viewer into reinvented landscapes reflective of whom or what has gone before. The objective is not to directly document physical surroundings but to imagine environments we have yet to discover. The intense contrasting tones of the works illicit a darkly romantic and somber mood mirroring the passage of time, environmental space and mortality.

Working from our mobile Boxfotos Airstream studio, I photograph the woods, abandoned structures and distinctive objects found along the way during my hikes. I digitally construct fictional narrative landscapes and make a finished negative. Back at the studio, using the 19th century bromoil process, each negative is printed onto silver gelatin photographic paper and then bleached to remove the entire silver image – leaving a matrix. The bromoil process involves special brushes used to apply ink to the surface of the damp matrix, often it can take anywhere from three to six hand-applied ink applications resulting in a unique, one-of-a-kind image.