Eugene Cole, Self Portrait, Surfboards Higgins Beach, 2025, Wet Plate Collodion Silver Gelatin Print, 8 x 10 inches

This ongoing series uses the wet plate collodion process, in which each image must be made before the plate dries—within roughly fifteen minutes. If it dries, the image is lost. Within this constraint, each portrait is made during a ten-minute exposure in which I attempt to remain still. The attempt inevitably fails. Subtle movements and shifts in balance register on the plate, marking the gap between intention and control. Made throughout my daily life—from my backyard to the beach to downtown Portland—these images do not fix identity, but record time passing through the body. They are traces of endurance, shaped by chemistry, duration, and physical limits.

I am a Maine-based artist working primarily with analog and historical photographic processes. My work explores the intersections of landscape, time, and embodiment, often engaging with the material and temporal qualities of image-making itself. I studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Southeast Center for Photographic Studies. My work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout New England and across the United States. My recent projects revisit and reinterpret historical photographic traditions through a contemporary, embodied lens, using process as a means to investigate presence, memory, and the physicality of perception. - E.C.