Portrait of My Camera
Photographic Series | 2016
Portrait of My Camera is a series of photographs that visualizes the raw materials—especially rare earth elements—embedded in the tools and processes of photography. The photographs are framed as a portrait of her camera and are made up of a series of individual minerals such as yttrium, terbium, lanthanum, and gold, all of which are essential components of modern imaging technologies, from digital sensors to lenses.
Photographed with the camera they comprise, each element becomes both subject and infrastructure, revealing the ethical tensions behind image-making. The series frames photography as an act of seeing, and also as one built upon extraction, labor, and environmental harm. In making these elements visible, Mattingly creates a meditation on photography’s contradictions: it can document injustice while simultaneously contributing to the systems that sustain it.
Project Details
- Years: 2016–Ongoing
- Medium: C-prints on Hahnemühle Cotton Rag
- Print Size: Variable editions
- Elements: Yttrium, Terbium, Monazite, Lanthanum, Gold, Indium, Geranium, Lutetium
- Exhibition: Robert Mann Gallery
“These elements are inside my camera, my computer, and the printer I use. Photography is construction, fabrication, and also truth. As I began to research the material systems behind the images I was making, I realized how deeply embedded they were in extractive industries. This series became a way to confront that; to bring the elemental into view, and reflect on what’s inside the devices we depend on to make art and tell stories.” - Mattingly
Each photograph in the series is a visual portrait of a specific rare earth element or mineral. Mattingly sources and stages the raw material in isolated compositions that highlight its physical properties and symbolic weight. Printed with the technologies these elements enable, the works enact a circular reflection on dependency and invisibility.
Through minimalist presentation and hyper-material focus, the images ask the viewer to understand photography not as a neutral medium, but as a medium loaded with complexity. It is framed as a dnetworked act tied to global mining economies, labor exploitation, and ecological cost. The project is research and reverence: a poetic exposure of what underlies the surface of each image.
Selected Works
Yttrium, 2015
Terbium, 2016
Indium, 2015