The Ground Glass Project
A 100 year-old camera. Real people. One photograph at a time.
There's a moment when someone sits in front of this camera and something shifts. The room gets quieter.
They stop thinking about how they look, the stress of the day or trying to pose for a picture. And that's when it happens, they relax and let their guard down and show the essence of who they actually are.
That's what I'm after.
The Ground Glass Project started with a Burke & James 8x10 field camera I bought from a professor nearly twenty years ago. When I finally pulled it out of storage in 2022, I remembered what I'd always loved about it: everything is upside-down and backwards on the ground glass, the world slowed way down, and every frame actually means something. Photographs are not taken on this camera, they are earned.
A professor I had in collage used to say, "A photographer doesn't take pictures, we make photographs." That distinction has never left me. This project is my return to that idea.
100 portraits, 99 down. Family, friends, strangers, people from all walks of life, each one captured as a triptych, because a single frame was never enough to hold a person. The texture of the ground glass, the scratches from decades of use, the warmth of the wooden camera the large lens, all of it becomes part of the image. You can't replicate that with an iPhone. You can't rush it either.
Want to be part of it?
Come down to the studio. Take a breath. Don't worry about smiling for the camera. We're not going to take your picture, we're going to make a photograph.
I'd love to see you.
Geoff
