03042014: Mercedes Jelinek and Silver & Light’s Ian Ruhter

Mercedes Jelinek is a photographer that concentrates in taking portraits of people. What she evokes in her images of people is diversity. One of her projects called the Photo Booth featured a series of portraits of young and old people of different races in the state of Louisiana. The people featured ranged in different emotions from happy to serious as well as appearance. What makes this project unique is that Mercedes Jelinek set up her booth and welcome passerby to take a picture. From the video of her project you can tell she had fun with people she met and made them comfortable to photograph.

While in the film, Silver & Light, Ian Ruhter is in touch with nature more so than taking portraits of people like Mercedes Jelinek. With his unique pinhole camera he developed, Ian Ruhter captures great images on silver plates. He is in total charge of his process as he develops his images within the back of his truck. He takes his camera all over the country capturing images he see fit capture an essence. However, this unique process is expensive and can lead to costly mistakes that can cause him to question everything he’s worked for. I’m pretty sure any artist can relate to this type of frustration. However, moments like those prepare us to reevaluate our approach and come up with alternative solution.