Welcome to no. 21 in our series Poignant Pics where we've asked photo curators, educators, collectors, and makers to share a brief essay on a photo that has significantly changed the way they think or look at the world.

In this issue, our editor Diana Nicholette Jeon talks about Shane Balkowitsch’s image, “Girl With Virus”, and how she felt when seeing it for the first time.

It Just Overwhelmed Me

I was doing one of my infrequent journeys through IG when I saw that @thecovertcollective showed this image. I did not need to ask myself who did it, I just knew it was a Shane Balkowitz, though I had not seen the image before. I knew his work from our interactions on Facebook - his style and technical mastery of wet plate collodion is unmistakable. I just knew it was one of his. I read the text, and sure enough, it was a “Shane.” The content was so perfectly suited to our time with the virus and done so masterfully from a technical standpoint as well. Shane works with an 8x10 camera using glass negatives. It is a dying art, but Shane is reviving it. He has images in major collections such as the Library of Congress and The Smithsonian. It’s something many of us aspire to and will never achieve. Upon seeing this image, I immediately contacted Shane and asked to show it here. I KNOW you understand why. It’s just so perfect on so many levels.

- Diana Nicholette Jeon

Shane Balkowitsch is a self-taught image-maker from Bismark, North Dakota, where he runs Nostalgic Glass Wet Plate Studio. He works with an 8 x10 Gibellini camera using the wet plate process and is renowned for his mastery of this challenging, archaic process. Since establishing his studio in 2012, he has made over 3800 wet plate images. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including Analog Forever, My Modern Met, L’oeil de la Photographie, and Peta Pixel, among others. Balkowitsch’s work is held in numerous private and public collections, including 28 museum collections; notable collections include the Smithsonian Museum, the Heard Museum, and the Library of Congress. 

More of his work may be found on his website.

Diana Nicholette Jeon is a Honolulu, HI based artist and an editor at One Twelve publications. She was awarded her MFA in Imaging and Digital Art from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County in 2006. Jeon's work has been extensively exhibited; venues include the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, the Griffin Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Hawaii State Art Museum and the Museo de Lamego. Awards include the Lensculture 2020 BW awards, four Hawaii SFCA Purchase Awards, the International Photo Awards, the 11th Julia Margaret Cameron award, the Pollux Award and the Mobile Photo Awards. Jeon’s art has been featured in a wide array of publications, including Artdocs, Gente di Fotografia, SHOTS Magazine, the Art Photo Index, and Lens Culture.