The Idle Class Photo Issue 2026

The Idle Class The photography issue

Crystal Jennings: Rewilding MAY 21–DEC. 19 | RECEPTION: 5-7 PM MAY 21 Sponsored by the Kline Family Foundation

Elly Bates: An Anchor and a Source JUNE 11–SEPT. 12 RECEPTION: 5-7 PM JUNE 11 Sponsored by Pine Bluff Sand & Gravel Co.

The Arts & Science Center 701 S. MAIN STREET, PINE BLUFF artx3.org

Made from scratch cakes, pastries, desserts, sandwiches & salads.

Also, catering available for events & film sets. Try our meeting space for arts events.

28 E. Main St., Farmington, AR 479.300.6027 linktr.ee/briarrosebakery Facebook.com/BriarRoseBakery/ IG: @briarrosebakery_ 2 | IDLECLASSMAG.COM

Frame Fayetteville

800 North College Avenue Fayetteville, AR 72701 479.422.7170 Framing fine art, photography, momentos & more.

Editor’s Note

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6-7: PROOF OF LIFE — A look at the world of found photography.

8: THE HUES OF HUMANITY — Can a camera capture someone’s aura?

O

Photo / Anna Culpepper

n this side of 2020, more and more people seem to be returning to the analog. We bake our own sourdough, crochet, scrapbook, develop film, collect records, and make things with our hands. As ubiquitous as algorithms and endless scrolling have become, these practices offer something different: a chance to slow down.

Physical media asks the same of us. It invites us to spend time with ideas instead of consuming them in passing.

As I curated and edited these pages, I thought about the privilege of being entrusted with these artists’ most important work and memories. Every image in this issue began as a moment of attention; someone noticed something meaningful and decided it was worth sharing. And every artist I’ve met through The Idle Class has reminded me that the world is still warm and people are still good.

That belief has always felt central to the magazine’s mission. The Idle Class celebrates local art, local stories, and the communities that make them possible.

It creates space for creative work to be preserved and elevated, which is a rare and increasingly valuable thing.

This issue marks my first as Editor-in-Chief. I’m grateful for the opportunity to steward a publication that means so much to so many people, and I’m honored to begin this chapter with you.

Thank you to Kody Ford for teaching me so much and trusting my creative vision. And thank you, reader, for supporting the artists whose work fills these pages.

Rachel Farhat

9: SHOOTING STARS — Photographer Brennen Duffield chases the cosmos.

10-11: RETRO FOCUS — Jason Masters frames the future through a vintage lens.

12-13: BENEATH THE SURFACE — Joli Livaudais finds wonder in the unseen.

20: BEING THERE — Gus Bower on the art of being assertive.

22: HUMAN NATURE — Meredith Mashburn captures the beauty of the world and challenges people to understand their place in it.

CONTRIBUTORS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Rachel Farhat CONTRIBUTORS Anna Culpepper | Arlton Lowry Joli Livaudais | Meredith Mashburn Nina Robinson | Bella Summerson Sam Williamson | Isabella Wisinger COVER Kacie “Kess” Skelton IDLECLASSMAG.COM | 3

EVENTS around the state LITTLE ROCK ACANSA Arts Festival Sept. 10-26 Various venues acansa.org

Arkansas native and music legend Levon Helm

The ACANSA Arts Festival returns to Central Arkansas for a multi-day celebration of visual and performing arts across Little Rock and North Little Rock. ACANSA brings together artists, patrons and community institutions to create an experience that spans disciplines and venues, fostering the kind of creative exchange that has made it a signature event on Arkansas’s cultural calendar. This year’s lineup will be announced in the coming months at acansa.org.

FAYETTEVILLE This Wheel’s Still On Fire: The Legacy of Levon Helm June 16–Sept. 6 Alexander Gallery at Porter Art Warehouse alexandergallery.org Walton Arts Center honors Arkansas native and rock and roll legend Levon Helm with a new exhibition curated by the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame. This Wheel’s Still On Fire features never-before-displayed personal photographs, instruments from members of The Band, tour memorabilia, awards and interviews with fellow musicians including Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Max Weinberg. Visitors can also sit down at the drums for a video tutorial led by Ramble Band multi-instrumentalist Charley Drayton. Admission is free with a reserved timed-entry ticket at alexandergallery.org.

Fayetteville Movement Festival July 10–12 Mount Sequoyah Center fayettevillemovementfestival.com The Fayetteville Movement Festival returns for three days of dance, yoga, and art at the scenic Mount Sequoyah Center, celebrating artistic culture across the NWA region and inviting the community to explore movement, embodiment and creativity together. Participants can build their own experience by selecting from 37 classes spanning hip-hop, contemporary dance, improv, sound baths, birdwatching, speed friending and more. Tickets, vendor information, lodging, kids’ activities and the full schedule of events are available at fayettevillemovementfestival.com.

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“Nostalgia” by Crystal Jennings

PINE BLUFF

Rewilding by Crystal Jennings May 21–Dec. 19 Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas artx3.org Pine Bluff native Crystal Jennings brings her large-scale charcoal work to the International Paper Gallery with Rewilding, an exhibition that invites visitors to unplug and reconnect with the natural world. The intricate drawings weave together human forms, wildlife, and natural landscapes — using the absence of color and the dense texture of charcoal to slow the viewer down and pull them into deliberate detail. Jennings describes the work as a visual “system restore,” a counterpoint to the noise and pace of screen-driven life.

Kacie “Kess” Skelton

IG / Photography: @flicksbykess | Personal: @glitterfairykess

Kacie “Kess” Skelton is a photographer and visual artist originally from Little Rock who recently relocated to Chicago to pursue new creative opportunities and expand her artistic practice. Though now exploring a new city, her connection to photography began much earlier: around age 4, with a Winnie the Pooh film camera she still owns today.

Growing up, she and her friends staged Tumblr-inspired photoshoots in backyards and local parks, where she learned early to tell stories through images.

Skelton describes her work as deeply rooted in emotion and collaboration. Her photography often blends vivid color, dramatic lighting and graphic elements to create dreamlike, surreal images that feel both personal and cinematic.

Influenced by Asian editions of Vogue and photographers such as Hope Glassel, she is drawn to imagery that captures emotional intensity while pushing visual boundaries.

Rather than beginning with rigid concepts, Skelton often builds ideas organically through collaboration and conversation, focusing on the stories people want to tell about themselves. Her recent work explores the intersection of emotion, identity and visual experimentation as she continues to develop a style that is distinctly her own.

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ast year, I found myself scrolling through ShopGoodwill auctions for boxes of old snapshot photographs. Binders filled with faces, road trips, birthday cakes, backyards and living rooms.

Ordinary moments someone once thought worth keeping. Now listed, bid on and shipped to strangers. A whole life reduced to thumbnails on a screen.

These photographs didn’t survive because they were famous or historic. They survived because someone cared enough to save them.

And when that person was gone,

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the care often disappeared with them. What remains is a quiet pattern playing out across estate sales, flea markets and online auctions: everyday lives slipping out of context and into circulation.

When we talk about preserving history, we usually mean institutions, famous figures or major events. But most lives are never archived that way. Snapshots are one of the few records that prove ordinary people were here. They loved, worked, gathered, traveled and aged.

When those images are discarded, the record goes with them.

We live in a culture that values speed over stillness. Nearly every moment is now documented digitally on social platforms and in the cloud. We record constantly.

And in the process, we’ve traded something away. Physical records of a life. Photographs you can hold, hang, misplace, rediscover, carry with you. Digital files don’t weigh anything. They don’t age. They don’t gather the marks of time that turn an object into evidence of having lived.

In Arkansas, this loss often plays out quietly. Family albums from small towns, rural communities and closed workplaces disappear when homes are cleared and stories go untold.

I’m not alone in caring about what’s being lost. Across the country, and online, small communities of collectors are rescuing discarded snapshot photographs before they disappear. At their best, these efforts are acts of stewardship. A recognition that even without names or captions, these images still carry meaning.

There is some reason for optimism. A growing number of Gen Z photographers have moved away from the polish of digital photography and toward film pointand-shoot cameras. The appeal is obvious. When anyone can produce a technically perfect image with little effort, the photograph loses its weight. Perfection becomes background noise.

Film resists that. Grain, light leaks, missed focus and uneven exposure introduce limits. Those limits give the image character. They remind the viewer that a person made it in a moment that could not be repeated. What looks like imperfection is often what makes the photograph feel honest.

In reaching for older tools, this generation is responding to something physical and human. The value isn’t nostalgia. It’s the acceptance that flaws carry meaning.

That idea existed long before social feeds and camera phones. A photograph doesn’t need to be perfect to matter. It needs to feel lived in.

This pull toward imperfection isn’t limited to film. It’s happening in digital photography, too. New pointand-shoot cameras now ship with built-in film simula-

tions. You select a vintage film stock, press the shutter, and the camera handles the rest. Grain, color shifts, faded highlights. All applied instantly.

Even instant cameras have leaned into this impulse.

A recent Fujifilm Instax model features a physical dial that lets users choose a decade to mimic, stretching back to the 1930s. The camera produces a tangible print, but the aesthetic is preselected and manufactured. The messiness gets curated.

It’s a contradiction. People want photographs that feel real, aged and human. But they increasingly arrive there through simulation. We’re chasing the look of imperfection rather than living with its consequences.

The impulse is understandable. It suggests a hunger for weight, texture and limits. It also reveals how far we’ve drifted from the physical record itself.

This push to manufacture imperfection only makes authentic snapshots matter more. We don’t need more simulation. We need more real, tactile objects that carry evidence of human lives. Photographs made by people who felt, worked, loved and moved through the world without expecting an audience. They left behind fragments. A birthday. A road trip. A porch. A face. These images weren’t designed to perform. They simply survived.

Held in the hand, old snapshots ask less of us than digital images do. They don’t demand attention. They don’t refresh. They wait. And in doing so, they remind us that ordinary lives were once here, and that their traces deserve care.

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tious and goal-oriented, blues are trustworthy and service-oriented, purples are visionaries and freethinkers, and whites are healers and spiritually-motivated.”

Aura photography opens a unique door to introspection; walking through offers great insight when “going through big changes.” Samek explains that auras can shift over time as mental, physical and emotional transformations develop.

With multiple dispersed photography sessions, Happy Aura has the ability to determine an individual’s “anchor color,” the color that appears consistently throughout numerous photographs.

“Some of the more unique photos we have taken have a very bright, almost neon magenta that takes up a large portion of the image,” Samek says. “This is typically a sign of someone that is creatively manifesting something for themselves.”

Portraits allow Happy Aura’s clients to feel seen, as projected auras offer validation and self-discovery. The motivational effects of aura photography encourage individuals “to start that business they’ve been dreaming of.” The flood of possibilities Happy Aura puts forward is an “energetic blueprint” abundant with inspiration and spirituality.

IG / @HAPPYAURA.AR HAPPYAURUA.AS.ME

T

ranscending through the journeys of life, individuals constantly acquire new understandings of self-identity in a variety of differing mediums. From dyeing their hair, to experimenting with eyeshadow to adding to their tattoo collection, self-expression is often presented through color.

Happy Aura, founded by Krystian and Mary Samek, takes this concept and applies it to the intangibles surrounding one’s spirit. The couple presents a way in which “humans (hue-mans) are capable of having a visual representation of our electromagnetic field.”

Happy Aura utilizes the AuraCam 6000 to analyze a person’s aura. “The way it works is by measuring your vibration through two hand plates,” Samek explains. “Those measurements are taken in hertz, and that measurement is translated into color and put onto Instax film.” The interpretation of each client’s atmospheric coloring is explored based on varying meanings: “Reds are passionate and physical, oranges are confident and creative, yellows are intelligent and excellent teachers, greens are ambi8 | IDLECLASSMAG.COM

SHOOTING STARS Brennen Duffield chases the cosmos with her camera.

By Rachel Farhat

Astrophotography wasn’t always Brennen Duffield’s career. Before teaching photography full-time, she owned a roofing company. But her fascination with the night sky stretches back much further: to childhood evenings spent stargazing with her grandfather.

As a child, Duffield spent countless nights sitting on a porch swing with her Papaw, looking up at the stars.

He always seemed to spot shooting stars before she did. The night he passed away, she saw her first meteor. Since then, she has viewed chasing the night sky as a way of staying connected to him.

“I chose astrophotography for one reason — my papaw,” Duffield said. “We spent countless nights on the porch swing star gazing. He would always see a shooting star, and somehow I would always miss it….until the night he passed away. That night, I saw my first shooting star, and I knew that was him.”

What started as a hobby eventually became a career.

Duffield built enough success through astrophotography to sell her roofing company and dedicate herself fully to photographing and teaching the night sky. Today, she travels extensively in pursuit of extraordinary celestial landscapes, from the deserts of Utah to an upcoming expedition in South Africa.

Her images are the result of careful planning and technical precision. Duffiield uses astronomy planning apps to map compositions long before arriving on location. Once there, she may spend hours scouting a foreground that aligns perfectly with the stars that will appear later in the night. Some photographs require camping deep in the backcountry and waiting until midnight or later to capture the final image.

While specialized cameras, lenses, and tracking equipment help produce the stunning detail seen in her work, Duffield believes astrophotography is accessible to anyone willing to learn. “Besides having the right camera gear that makes it possible to capture the stars, you also need some intestinal fortitude to face any fears of the night, and a lot of patience,” she said.

Arkansas has become an increasingly popular destination for night-sky enthusiasts thanks to the Buffalo National River’s International Dark Sky Park designation, and Nicole now teaches workshops designed to help beginners get started. Through her photography, she hopes to share the wonder of the night sky and encourage others to look up more often.

IG: @BRENNEN.NICOLE | BRENNENNICOLE.COM IDLECLASSMAG.COM | 9

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RETRO FOCUS

Jason Masters frames the future through a vintage lens.

J

By Sam Will iamson

ason Masters has spent the better part of 30 years capturing forward-thinking fashion with his signature retro-inspired photography. Despite an impressive and diverse portfolio, the man’s drive to shoot shows no sign of slowing. Thankfully, Jason was able to take a bit of time between a photo shoot and diving into some post-production work to talk on the phone about his expansive career.

While Masters is currently based in Central Arkansas, his roots are in Texas.

Masters was born in Dallas and went to school in Austin. His adventurous spirit took him away from the States, leading him to spend his early 20s living in Central America. The idea was for both him and his brother to live off the grid and off the land. They did this for about three years. Eventually, despite living most people’s dreams, the siblings decided it was time for a change of pace and moved back to Austin. Upon returning, he landed his first internship with a film production company that worked on feature films and national TV commercial campaigns. More importantly, in his first week back, Masters met his wife, who also happened to be an Arkansas native. Before long, the two of them were married off and decided to settle down in the Natural State.

Not long after coming to Arkansas, Masters landed the kind of job in the photography business that you don’t often think of. His first gig saw him taxiing models from the airport to the Capital Hotel, where they would stay while not working on photo shoots. One day, Master’s route had him drop his passengers off at a photoshoot. The fast-paced action of the scene proved irresistible and his career aspirations became clear. From there, Masters would act as a helping hand on photoshoots for about a year, that is, until his boss became injured and needed the young intern to step up and lead his first photoshoot.

After leading photoshoots in Los Angeles, New York, Africa, Jamaica and other exciting locations for a couple of decades, Masters has truly come into his own as an artist, even launching his own modeling and talent agency, Ava Model Management. He describes his style as a blend of retro aesthetics and a focus on modern fashion. In taking this old-school approach, he can avoid modern photography trends while continuing to enjoy the latest developments in camera technology. Clearly, this has been a winning approach.

JASONMASTERS.COM IG / @JASON___MASTERS IDLECLASSMAG.COM | 11

Beneath the

Surface

Through microscopes, memory and photography, Joli Livaudais finds wonder in the unseen.

By Rachel Farhat Sunflower Spine, Apophenia, 2005

Joli Livaudais wants viewers to look closer … then closer still. In her series Apophenia, ordinary matter becomes unfamiliar. Using a microscope, the Little Rock photography professor photographs cells, fragments of plant life, family negatives and personal artifacts, searching for visual connections between the microscopic world and human experience.

Livaudais came to photography through psychology rather than a traditional fine arts path. She first discovered the medium as an undergraduate and later earned an M.S. in Experimental Psychology, a background that continues to shape the way she sees and analyzes the world.

“In the natural world, patterns repeat at the micro and macro level,” she said. “I find both beauty and order in this repetition.”

That search for patterns forms the foundation of Apophenia. Named for the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between seemingly unrelated things, the series explores the possibility that memories, relationships and the natural world may be linked by a hidden underlying structure (or that humans simply long to find one).

Foliage, Apophenia, 2016

Reminiscent of 19th-century alchemists who studied nature in search of spiritual transformation, Livaudais uses a microscope and camera as her tools. The images are printed using historic photographic processes such as cyanotype and gum bichromate. These techniques allow chemistry, texture and the artist's hand to transform the final image.

“Scientific images are intended to answer questions more than ask them,” she said. Her work instead embraces uncertainty, exploring connection, memory, spirituality and the ways people fit into the world around them.

For Livaudais, the microscope is not just a scientific instrument, but a way of looking; her images invite viewers to pause, observe and wonder what lies beneath the surface.

Trees, Apophenia, 2013

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JOLI-LIVAUDAIS.COM

joli-livaudais.com

AND THEN I WILL SEE ARTIST STATEMENT My mother’s battle with cancer financially devastated my parents. When she died, my father fixated on winning the lottery as a solution to the crisis. He believed that there are patterns in the universe and that by studying nature, they can be discerned. Things we believe to be random can be predicted if the variables are understood. He spent the next several years working on discovering the pattern.

Every day, he took thousands of random samples of numbers and placed them into color-coded grids that only made sense to him.

I did not get along with my father. He was a difficult man to love. But when he died, and I sat with the boxes of pages of gridded numbers, I recognized much of myself in the pages...the study of nature in search of something deeper, the same desire for meaning and order, the same tendency to obsess. Although I would deny it, I am my father’s daughter.

In these photographs, I study nature, beauty and the minutia of my own life in the context of my father’s data, with all the emotion and ambiguous connections that such a study implies. The images, captured on black-and-white film with a lensless pinhole camera and often layered with photographs of my father’s numbers, are hand-colored and printed in the layered, historical process of gum bichromate. This highly involved process yields images that are softly focused and reminiscent of a constructed memory.

– Joli Livaudais IDLECLASSMAG.COM | 13

The Editorial Eye

Sarah Oden brings artistic vision and creative ambition to Arkansas’s fashion scene.

By Isabella Wisinger

S

arah Oden has made a name for herself in editorial and fashion photography right here in Arkansas. She says that working in a smaller, regional market requires a certain level of scrappiness: “You’re more limited with models and locations, and it makes you think outside the box. I am always asking myself, ‘How can I make it interesting?’” Her photography career was shaped by her collegiate education at the University of Central Arkansas, where she learned her way around the darkroom and fell in love with black-and-white photography.

Fashion photography allows for creative risk-taking that doesn’t always translate into commercial work.

Dramatic lighting and posing are hallmarks of the genre that set it apart from other styles of photography. Sarah’s favorite shoots are all about couture, and she says that fabric composition is an important detail in editorial work because it influences the movement and shape of silhouettes captured in frame.

Sarah’s love of fashion has led her to other ventures, most notably LR Met. Sarah has organized the event for the past three years with Kimberly Sear and other friends, and it has become one of the state’s grandest fashion celebrations.

“We give a light to independent local designers — we’ve had designers make custom clothing for the event, people making their own outfits, and it’s really fun to see the different variations,” she said.

The Little Rock Met has featured the likes of luxury leatherworker brand OFAOLAIN and Project Runway alumnus Korto Momolu, as well as independent local designers such as 22nd Element and Barakat Bespoke. Every year, Sarah shoots a commemorative portrait for the event, which this year took place on May 8 at M2 Gallery. She continues to find fresh ways to bring fashion photography to the forefront of Arkansas’s creative scene.

SARAHODEN.COM IG / @SARAHODENPHOTO 14 | IDLECLASSMAG.COM

Words + Photos by Nina Robinson

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ot Forgotten: An Arkansas Family Album is a deeply personal and evolving body of work that explores themes of loss, love, memory and heritage within my own family in rural Arkansas. The project began in 2014 when I returned to Arkansas after 15 years away, only to lose my maternal grandmother, the matriarch of our family, shortly after my arrival. Her passing became the catalyst for me to document the everyday moments of my family, building stronger connections with my loved ones and gaining a deeper understanding of our family’s history in this rural community.

Through documentation and intimate portraits, this work captures the beauty of daily life, familial bonds and the rich traditions passed down through generations. Each photograph is a chapter in the larger narrative of my family’s story, exploring both the struggles of loss and the enduring strength of love. The images serve as a tribute to our shared history and an act of preservation, honoring the legacy that shapes who we are.

This ongoing photo series is not just about making photographs; it’s about the process of reconnecting with my roots, forging deeper relationships and reflecting on our family’s connection to this land.

As I continue to document my family, this body of work will keep unfolding, revealing new layers of meaning and connection with each chapter.

NINAROBINSONPHOTOGRAPHY.COM | IG @NINAROBINSONPHOTO 16 | IDLECLASSMAG.COM

QUEEN

by Katie Adkins

By Rachel Farhat

hotographer Katie Adkins is drawn to what lies beneath the surface. Across projects P ranging from drag performers to family walks

through nature, her work explores the layers of identity shaped by self-expression, resistance, and cultural expectation.

That fascination with identity takes center stage in Queen, a photo series documenting not only the performance of Arkansas drag queens, but the intimate moments and personal identities underneath the makeup.

Adkins says she had wanted to photograph drag performers for years, but the project took shape when she met a performer known as Queen, who would eventually give the series its name. While she was initially drawn to drag artists because they are “charismatic, colorful, confident, and very aware of the camera,” her deeper interest was in “the space between performance and the person behind it.”

Over several years of working on the project, Adkins built relationships with performers and gained access to moments beyond the stage.

She became particularly interested in the quieter, more vulnerable spaces behind the performance, revealing the dedication, artistry, and community that sustain drag culture.

What she hopes viewers take away from the series is simple. “When you begin to peel back those layers, what remains is a shared humanity.”

For Adkins, those layers are where the most compelling stories live.

KATIEADKINSPHOTOGRAPHY.COM IG: @KATIEADKINSPHOTOGRAPHY 18 | IDLECLASSMAG.COM

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lege of Marin and immersed himself in the work of photographers such as Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand.

While many photographers talk about equipment, Bower talks about observation. He taught himself by studying the work of photographers he admired, spending years analyzing books and images to understand what made them successful.

He also fell in love with the darkroom. “You could make the print look better than the actual photo that you took,” he says. “That’s what made you the artist.”

Though he eventually transitioned to color photography, Bower spent more than twenty years shooting and printing black-and-white photographs himself, controlling every stage of the process from exposure to final print. That dedication carried into his professional work. Bower spent two decades as a credentialed photographer on the professional tennis circuit, documenting some of the sport’s greatest players. In 2024, he self-published Players, a collection of photographs from those years.

For aspiring photographers, his advice is simple: start with subjects you know, experiment constantly, and build the confidence to approach people outside your comfort zone.

BEING THERE

Gus Bower on the art of being assertive.

by Rachel Farhat

n 1983, photographer Gus Bower was walking through Central Park on a day off from shooting the U.S. IOpen when he spotted Andy Warhol walking toward him. Many people would have let the moment pass, but Bower stepped directly into Warhol’s path. “I said, ‘Andy, I am such a big fan of yours. Could you please let me take a picture of you?’” Bower recalls.

Warhol agreed. Bower then asked if he would move beside a nearby tree and posed him for the photograph.

When they finished, Warhol simply said, “Okay,” and walked away.

More than forty years later, Bower still considers it the greatest photograph he ever made. “The moral of that story,” he says, “is that I was assertive enough to pose one of the greatest artists in American history.”

That willingness to step forward, whether in front of Andy Warhol, a world-famous athlete, or a passing stranger, has shaped Bower’s career as a photographer.

Born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1948, Bower graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in history before moving to San Francisco, where he spent three decades. There, he studied photography at Col20 | IDLECLASSMAG.COM

“You need to be assertive,” he says.

GUSBOWERPRODUCTIONS.COM

HOLLIDAY HEIRLOOMS Matthew Nixon makes photos that last a lifetime and then some.

By Isabella Wisinger

intyping, also known as “wet plate” photography, room. Nixson later bakes the tintypes at low heat to isn’t for the faint of heart. This style of photography solidify and preserve the imagery.

T requires complex chemical solutions, precise timing,

and the patience to cultivate a single image over sev- Nixson says tintypes are akin to family heirlooms because of their long shelf life — on average, a correctly eral days. prepared photo lasts for 100 years. The journey from tintyping student to full-time According to Matthew Nixprofessional has been fulfillson of Holliday Tintype, ing for him. He’s proud of the tintype is a method of detalent he developed through veloping a photo on a thin time, trial, and error; recalling sheet of metal. It doesn’t the first six months of practice have to be tin, necessarily; when he ‘didn’t know what he these photos were historiwas doing’ to finding mencally printed on blackened tors and collodion suppliers, iron plates and, in the presteaching himself about apent day, can be produced erture and film speeds, and on lacquered aluminum becoming the accomplished panels. The final image is tintyper he is today. monochromatic, presented in shades of gray, black and The variability of the art form white. is one of his favorite things about it; even with the same In the 1800s, when tintype set of tools, the results can still was first patented, oldbe surprising. “Tintyping is a school cameras with bellows raw process, because of the were used. The process can light spectrum it’s using,” he be completed today with explained. modern instruments — Nixson says he prefers a Kodak The chemical recipes required or film camera. The image to create a tintype can vary captured by the camera between photographers, but is cast onto a metal plate, the common element is the which is prepared to transfer moment when the negative the blank photo emulsion. image becomes a positive one.

It’s a delicate process. Salts, ether and cadmium are “It’s a beautiful dance bepoured over the metal plate tween magic and science. That and gently manipulated to cover its surface until it reaches a syrupy consistency. few seconds where the photo turns light to dark — it Once the chemicals settle, the plate is submerged in a keeps me doing this on days when it’s too hot and the sensitizing bath containing silver nitrate and collodion, ether is burning off faster than I can make the plates. which renders it light-sensitive. (Nixson says that he’s Seeing people get excited about that moment is a had to make peace with silver nitrate stains on all his beautiful part of the process,” Nixson shared. clothing.) After exactly three minutes, the plate is reSince getting into tintype, he has taken over 4,000 pormoved and transferred to a photo box. traits and has turned his photography into a full-time Nixson’s mobile darkroom equipment produces 4500 travel business. “I made a completely new career at watts of light per second, activating the silver crystals 38,” he said. “Don’t give up on your dream.” to develop a negative image. That negative must be made light safe by “washing” it in total darkness, revealing the positive image. He wears a red light head- HOLLIDAYTINTYPE.COM lamp to see what he’s doing inside the mobile dark- IG / @HOLLIDAY_TINTYPE IDLECLASSMAG.COM | 21

HUMAN NATURE

Meredith Mashburn captures the beauty of the world while challenging viewers to reconsider their place within it.

Words + Photos by Meredith Mashburn hotography is more than capturing moments; it’s P about capturing life itself and truly being in the moment. My camera has allowed me to document the diversity and beauty of the world — from Arkansas’s powerful landscapes to New York’s electric streets. Each photograph tells a story, embodying the moment, emotions, and environment that define it, and raising the vibration of humanity one frame at a time.

I strongly believe in the role of art in activism, a term that has sadly become viewed negatively by some.

Through my work, I strive to reclaim and redefine what it means to be an ‘activist’ — it’s about advocating for positive change and awareness, especially regarding environmental sustainability. My ongoing project “Human Nature” embodies this mission, merging personal and global narratives to inspire a more conscious and harmonious way of living.

Through Human Nature, I seek to dissolve the artificial separations that distance us from our environment. We are not apart from nature; we are a part of nature. My aim is to rekindle that innate connection and remind us all of the vital role we play in the health and vitality of our planet.

This series is a journey back to the basics, to the pure and simple truths that we often forget in our busy lives.

It’s about finding beauty in the basics and wisdom in the wilderness. I invite you to join me in this exploration, to share in the discovery and perhaps find a path to your own awakening.

MASHBURNPHOTO.COM IG / @MASHBURNPHOTO 22 | IDLECLASSMAG.COM

“Oshun” by Anna Culpepper IDLECLASSMAG.COM | 23

SAVE THE DATE

Full schedule coming soon.

Visit ACANSA.org or scan the QR code for more information.