The Photographs

Artist Bill Moore outside his wood shop in Portland, Oregon.

Don Leffler President of the Antique Caterpillar Machinery Museum in Brooks, Oregon.

Herbalist Scott A. Hughston outside his apartment in Asheville, North Carolina.

James King retired commercial printer / farmer & engineer at Antique Powerland in Brooks, Oregon.

Daguerreotypist Jerry Spagnoli at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

Pattern maker Gary Martin outside of his shop in Portland, Oregon. Gary makes wooden forms that are cast into metal for a variety of commercial clients.

Scott Smith is the youngest member of the Pacific Northwest Truck Museum located in Salem, Oregon.

An exterior view of the Second Nature School of Taxidermy in Bonner, Montana.

A unique silver gelatin photograph of Adlai Stein, a blacksmith at the Columbus Idea Foundry, taken by Stephen Takacs as part of the Brownie In Motion project. ©Stephen Takacs Photography

Taxidermist / Retired Army Officer Michael Wolf at the Second Nature School of Taxidermy in Bonner, Montana.

The King Family

Don King’s Last Saddle

Mike Wooton: Ropemaker

I photograph individuals that practice disappearing trades and crafts using a custom-built, room-sized camera that doubles as a portable darkroom. I shoot my images directly onto a special black and white photographic paper that produces a direct positive, laterally reversed image, much like a 19th century tintype photograph. Thus, every image is one of a kind.

While on location the prints are developed by hand inside of the camera in which they are exposed. Like the work of many of the craftspeople that I photograph, my images sometimes exhibit the marks of their creation, including pinholes, fingerprints and the occasional sweat stain.

In the 21st century, our society has moved from physical interaction to digital interfaces in many areas of our day to day lives. As a result, many time honored arts are passing into obsolescence and lost as older practitioners pass away. I’m interested in exploring what it means to retain — or return to — a more physical form of making by documenting individuals who practice these rarified crafts.

-Stephen Takacs-