As a photographer, l am constantly asking of photographs and the way that they function; as records, as memory, as light, as sculpture and material objects. Recently I have been considering a photograph as an experience of a place, or more specifically, experiencing a place with the purpose of being photographed in it.

In examining the Library Company of Philadelphia’s rich collection of archives, I sought wet plate images, using the lens or tourism to ask more specific questions of photography and how it relates to our experience of a place.

This image was taken on June 7th, 1869 and the archive’s label reads, "Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Livingston Bishop at Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls.” Before even reading the title, I knew this image was taken at Niagara Falls because I've seen this image before many times.

This photograph is one that has been reenacted over the last century by many tourists to follow the Bishops. This image is situated in a larger history of photography and its development in North America, running parallel with the birth of tourism as a product of the Industrial Revolution. In our current digital world, where our online presence often holds equal weight to our physical experience, and social media is based around image sharing, our individual experience of place has become somewhat altered.

Thinking about tourism and experiencing a destination for the purpose of being photographed in it is a very curious concept to me that speaks to some sort of artifice - whether that be of a place or of an image as a document. Using the language of the original photograph, I responded to this observation with a wet plate self-portrait on clear glass that I could layer over images of some of the most photographed landmarks in the U.S. as well as some more obscure.