Melissa Cacciola studied fine art and historic preservation
of art at Columbia University and New York University. Her specialties are
tintype and nineteenth-century photographic processes. For her project War
and Peace Cacciola uses the tintype process
to display portraits of active duty military and veterans from the Army, Navy,
Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marines. Each person is photographed in his or her military
uniforms and in their civilian clothes. Then the two images are displayed as a diptych.
The project explores the ideas of war, identity and culture.
By using the tintype process, Melissa Cacciola is making a gesture
to history and the beginnings of portraiture. This process is appropriate for
these images because not only are they portraits, but the backgrounds are
neutral in all of the images, so we can focus solely on the person in the
image. Exploring the idea of military identity is very interesting to me. It is
clear from these images that there is more to each person than their role in
the military. It is interesting to see their two sides of identity right next
to each other.
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