We kicked off No Strangers 2025 this weekend with a warm, buzzing reception inside Gallery 4 at HD SOUTH, where photographers, family, friends, and longtime Art Intersection supporters gathered to celebrate another year of shared creative vision. No Strangers has always been about community first, exhibition second — and this year’s opening made that especially clear.
From the moment the doors opened, the gallery filled with the unmistakable energy that happens when artists see each other’s work on the wall. Clusters of exhibitors formed almost immediately, leaning in close to prints, pointing out choices in contrast or composition, and swapping friendly critiques the way only people who’ve shared darkroom trays, workshops, and years of practice can. Conversations rippled through the space — some technical, some nostalgic, all grounded in mutual respect for the craft.
Guests moved through an eclectic mix of black-and-white studies, color landscapes, collage, and experimental works. The variety felt like a snapshot of our community’s creative range, shaped by different backgrounds, influences, and processes but united by shared enthusiasm. Many of the exhibiting artists spent the evening walking the room together, comparing notes, celebrating each other’s growth, and discovering new favorites on the walls.
Thank you to all our members who participated and to everyone who came out to support them. No Strangers 2025 is now open to the public until January 3rd, and we invite you to return, explore the work at your own pace, and experience the community spirit that makes this exhibition such a staple of ours.
Have you ever held a platinum print of a beautiful image? It’s amazing how printing in a handmade process turns a that image into an object of art that can be seen by many and handed down to future generations. I first experienced this excitement many years ago when I held in my own hands a 1934 platinum print hand-printed by Edward Weston, and I have been hooked ever since.
From the initial concept of Art Intersection through today, I have been determined to design and create a space for learning, creating, and exhibiting physical pieces. I know first-hand how viewing a print brings a more powerful and positive experience to the viewer than seeing a facsimile on the computer or tablet screen.
Digital negatives on our light table
The community of artists working in Art Intersection’s Photographic Arts Lab have access to three centuries of imaging technologies from darkroom to digital, including the new use of digital negatives to take our digital files from the phone or DSLR into the darkroom to create gelatin silver, platinum, cyanotype, tintype, or photogravure prints. I’m excited we can provide all the toolsto create contemporary work in almost any current or historical process.
News flash, we’ve added a new tool in the Photographic Arts Lab to bridge past centuries of photography (we build bridges, not walls). Last week an M.M. Kelton and Sons 1870 intaglio press arrived in the lab to create photogravure prints! See a press just like ours in action here.
Michael T. Puff discusses finished prints
If you are excited to make a print from your digital or film image, come by and see what’s available to help you realize your vision. Watching people create prints at Art Intersection allows me to continue enjoying, seeing, and maybe holding, beautiful prints from our image making community (eat your heart out Edward Weston).
Ambrotype images, a collodion process on glass, have a unique and beautiful aesthetics that makes this a very exciting in-camera, alternative photographic process.
Claire A. Warden led us through the history and technology of this process during a 3-day workshop that began with a lecture and ended with an open studio where the workshop students created their own Ambrotypes.
Beautiful and creative images were made this weekend using hand coated printing out paper. Friday night Siegfried gave a lecture, followed by two days of making prints using Printing Out Paper.
For two days Jerry Spagnoli (second from the right) led a workshop, teaching students to create their own Daguerreotype images using the Becquerel method in the darkrooms at Art Intersection. These are the new Daguerreians (less one who was camera shy).
Many of the plates were exposed in a large format camera and some were contact printed from a film positive.
A Daguerreotype is a photographic image, produced on a sheet of polished silver, unmatched for its detail and clarity, and for its unique presence. The process has a rich historical legacy but has been largely lost to artists for over one hundred years.
The workshop participants learned all the steps necessary to make a Bequerrel Daguerreotype include polishing, sensitizing and finishing the plates, as well as how to make their own equipment to continue the process in their own darkrooms.
