Artist Feature: Martha Wheeler
Do you believe in ghosts (apparitions)?
Absolutely. In fact, I ghost hunt in my spare time with fellow artist Jem Brock and I have delved into spirit photography with the wet plate process.
What is the most dangerous thing you have done for your art?
Playing with cyanide and ether to make photographs. I’ve never come close to an accident with my chemicals and I love being a part of a small community of female collodion photographers, defying anyone who dare ask, “Should you really be messing with that stuff?” If I were a man, they would never ask.
What was the biggest turning point in your career for your work(art)?
A big turning point was when I realized that photography was the most effective method to share my ideas – to document the world in a format that creates a relationship of trust between artist and viewer in a way that a painting or drawing cannot. In the Collodion Witches project, there is a truthfulness to how contemporary witchcraft is portrayed, even though the viewer is separated from the subject by a number of factors including my own bias, they see the witch in the way they wish to be seen.
What is your art about?
Using a photographic process invented in 1851, I document the rituals, experiences, and altars of witches. The wet plate collodion process is unforgiving, often susceptible to failure, with low success rates yet produces entirely unique images through the tintype and ambrotype. While providing its photographer with unparalleled contrast and haunting forms, this process lends itself to the portrayal of witchcraft through the use of dangerous, rudimentary chemicals and long exposure times. The collodion plates elevate the witch as they become ethereal forms, mystical beings with ghostly eyes and wavering bodies. Contemporary witchcraft blends a mix of various historical practices that traditionally provide power to its users. The people photographed in Collodion Witches have systematically been denied rights and safety, finding sanctum within witchcraft as a source of control and power. The wet plate process reimagines witches in a light that distracts from the negative stereotypes assigned upon them, representing the subjects with truth to reveal their lives and experiences.
Martha Wheeler (b. 1997) is an artist specializing in the 170-year-old wet plate collodion photographic process as well as performance art. Her work delves into issues of otherness, femininity, and violence currently through the Collodion Witches project in which she photographs contemporary witches and their rituals. Her photographs have been shown in various galleries in the Colorado Springs area such as Kreuser Gallery and The Gallery Below and in 2019 was featured in a solo show at The Dock. She is graduating from UCCS in 2020 where she also serves as co-president of Art Club. Martha lives and works in Colorado Springs taking photographs with a 100-year old camera and a self-built, portable darkroom in the back of her car.
@marthawheeler | marthawheeler.com
Martha Wheeler, Adey, tintype, 4x5”, 2020.
See the work of Wheeler and her fellow UCCS VAPA Seniors by following their virtual exhibition Apparition. To be featured @vauccs April through May 2020, along with many other student exhibitions that have been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
