Will Wilson

Selection of 17 works from the Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX) project

Will Wilson is a Diné photographer who spent his formative years living in the Navajo Nation. For Wilson’s ongoing Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX) project, he employs a wet-plate collodion photographic technique, based on the nineteenth-century method that involves exposing and then developing a plate that has been coated in light-sensitive chemicals.

Wilson pushes the CIPX project even further with the inclusion of “Talking Tintypes,” which use AR technology to bring photographs to life. Wilson explores identity, the photographic medium as both art and science, and community. He collaborates with his sitters, who determine their pose, clothing, props, and how they are presented. As a gesture of reciprocity, Wilson gives the sitters the original photograph, while retaining the right to print and use scans for artistic purposes. Originally, CIPX was Wilson’s way to work toward a re-imagined vision of Native people response to historic photographers such as Edward Curtis and his The North American Indian (1907-1930).

More recently, Wilson has also began to include non-Native sitters, as his work moves towards exploring a broader sense of community and identity.