Faces Around Us is an analog large-format portrait series documenting the people within my Truman State University community. Through portraits paired with short personal stories, this project highlights the familiar faces we pass every day and creates space to see them beyond the surface.
Inspired by Philippe Halsman’s Jump series, I wanted to capture a similar sense of openness and honesty, but through conversation rather than movement. Each portrait session was slow and intentional, using the manual process of large-format film photography as a way to build comfort and connection with each person before taking their portrait.
After photographing the series, I experimented with multiple printing processes, including darkroom prints, cyanotypes, lumen prints, and large-format inkjet prints. By using both historic and contemporary methods, this project became not only a portrait series, but also a way to preserve and celebrate analog photography as a meaningful, human-centered art form.
