Mac Cosgrove-Davies: Essential Arlington

JENKINS COMMUNITY GALLERY, LOWER LEVEL

MoCA Arlington is proud to present Essential Arlington, a solo exhibition of photographs by Arlington-based photographer Mac Cosgrove-Davies.

In Essential Arlington, photographer Mac Cosgrove-Davies captures portraits of people whose labor, care, and expertise keep the community of Arlington running. They support the infrastructure and services that allow everyone who lives, works, or just visits Arlington to go about their daily lives.

The project highlights workers in Arlington County departments such as Environmental Services, Fire, Police, and Recreation, as well as private sector workers providing core services such as food supply, medicine, and funeral services. This selection of workers is meant to be representative of the broad range of essential workers employed in the county. With this project Cosgrove-Davies seeks to honor “those whose jobs are essential for what makes Arlington tick, but who are rarely given credit for their contribution.”

Cosgrove-Davies works with the wet plate collodion technique, which was the dominant photographic process from the 1850s to the 1870s. To create the photographs, Cosgrove-Davies uses a large format camera. He coats an aluminum plate with salted collodion, sensitizes it, exposes it in the camera, and develops it on the spot, to make a direct positive image. The timeless appearance of the sepia-toned images and the labor required to make them imbues the portraits with a gravitas that celebrates their subjects and the community they make possible.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mac Cosgrove-Davies
Born 1957, Mount Holly, NJ
Lives and works in Arlington, VA

Mac Cosgrove-Davies is a self-taught photographer who since 1978 has been practicing historic photographic processes including gum bichromate, cyanotype, Van Dyke, palladium, carbon printing, and wet plate collodion. Using antique and self-made film cameras and equipment in various formats (from medium to large format and panoramic), he seeks to make unique prints which match his images to the beauty and elegance of the selected photographic process.

He currently leads the Handmade Photo Practice and teaches at Photoworks at Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo, Maryland, USA and also teaches elsewhere. He exhibits widely and is represented in collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Library of Congress.

Related Programs
Opening Reception: Essential Arlington
Saturday / December 6 / 4pm-6pm