KEN ROSENTHAL

FEATHERS

Feathers is an ongoing, long term project which I commenced work on in 2008. This series of cyanotype prints is informed by my interest in vernacular portraiture, the documentation (and loss) of familial history, and the universal desire/compulsion to collect. 

I have collected vernacular photographs for many years, and the majority of the images I acquire are portraits. While some of these prints have writing on the back that identifies the sitter, location, date or provides other context (most often a real photo postcard), many are blank backed. I actually prefer this absence of a backstory as far as my collection goes, for it allows me to craft a narrative based on my reading of the visual clues within the image: hairstyle and clothing, setting, expression, gesture, etc.

Some years ago I was sorting through a box of old miscellaneous family photographs with my mother. There was one very striking albumen print, a studio portrait of an older man who bore a pained expression. I asked my mother who he was, and all she remembered was that it was a relative on my father's side of the family. She had known his name and where he fit on the family tree, but never notated that information on the back of the photograph. 

In 2008, while spending time at my families cabin in Northeast Washington, we spotted a bald eagle nesting in a tree by the lakeshore on our property. It was the first time since I was a young child that eagles had been sighted on our lake. One afternoon the eagle took flight from the tree, and a feather drifted down and landed on the dock near where I was sitting. My wife had brought some cyanotype solution to the cabin, and I made a cyanotype of that feather. The feather was at once strong and fragile, graceful. The image I made was ultimately a portrait of this being that I felt blessed to encounter.

Subsequent to that, I found feathers on a daily basis. I imagine I likely came across them regularly before but had not taken notice of them any more than I would a leaf or scrap of paper on the ground. The state and condition of each feather I find evokes a unique story, formulating a narrative in my mind of that being's life. Like found portraits, they are a snapshot frozen in time: an artifact of a soul, a proof of existence, part of a history to be preserved.