Occupational Portraits in Waterford, Virginia
A collaborative set of photographs made with Nate Larson, as part of his Centroid Towns project
VI: Like a Passing Shadow
Like a passing shadow - transcribe from site
Through the foundation, we reached out to the Waterford-adjacent community of artisans and craftspeople, including faculty at the craft school, and invited them to have their contemporary portrait made using this unique historic process. Sitters dictated the choice of clothing and selected the objects and tools of their trade. We made two plates with each person - one for the exhibition and one for them to keep. The most interesting part for us is when an image begins to read as historic and then shifts with the reveal of an anachronism or contemporary detail. This speaks to the dual identities of Waterford today, which coexists as both modern and historic, occupying both spaces concurrently..
Centroid Towns - Quick Background on Nate Larson's longterm project
Centroid Towns is an anthology documentary project creating a portrait of the towns tagged by this coordinate over the years. Nate Larson's project uses this idea of the “symbolic center” of the country as a fulcrum to examine the challenges facing the United States.
Since 2014, Nate has photographed in all twenty-five project cities and is currently working on long-term fieldwork in six of them, with additional fieldwork under development. The chapters of the project completed to date examine the environmental impact of overdevelopment, historical legacies of colonial settlers, the changing face of industrial manufacturing, the evolution of American Christianity, economic pressures created by corporations on small business, and civic engagement in small towns.