ON THE MAP | Rudy Salgado and Susanna Crum

ON THE MAP | Rudy Salgado and Susanna Crum

How and when does a town begin? In the US, the naming and establishment of a post office have inscribed the intention and identity of a town on maps and within communities. From the 1860s to the 1930s, itinerant tintype photographers traveled the country with mobile portrait studios. They summoned ghosts in the atmospheric backgrounds of their images or documented soldiers and the deceased for inclusion in the newly popular family photo album. Tintypes were the first affordable means for Americans to share images with distant family and friends, as the photographs on metal could be reliably placed in the mail. Rudy Salgado and Susanna Crum traveled with a mobile darkroom around the state of Kentucky, investigating historical post office sites with this 170-year-old method. In their hours spent producing hand-poured plates on site, they met property owners and history keepers who shared stories of the post office as a crucial community-powered site for information and social exchange. On the Map includes photographs, drawings, and postcards from this research-led journey.

About the Artists

Bryants Store

Chromaluxe print from wet plate collodion tintype, 2021

Two men came down from yonder holler, broke into the store, and stole a lot of things. Flour all over the floor. He remembers seeing their footprints in the flour before anyone else knew about the break-in. Daddy had fed them dinner, and one of them had his feet up by the fire. He had a nail sticking out of his shoe. When he saw the footprints in the flour, you could make that nail out clear as day.

Waynesburg I

Chromaluxe print from wet plate collodion tintype, 2021

His bike alongside him, he treads across the railroad tracks in his socks. He’s on his bike most all the time, so he usually knows what’s going on. What his grown-up neighbors are up to. When the door is unlocked to this building. He heard a man hung himself there, and then it was a dentist’s office.

Waynesburg II

Chromaluxe print from wet plate collodion tintype, 2021

Montpelier

Chromaluxe print from wet plate collodion tintype, 2021

Her husband calls her “The Information.” When they demolished the old post office, she wanted that window. The one they scratched with the diamond, writing their names. She spoke to the guy taking it down and told him she had fifty dollars cash. He wouldn’t sell it, but let her pay the fee for taking it down. So it went to her house across the street, instead of the auction. 

Rowletts I

Chromaluxe print from wet plate collodion tintype, 2021

We set up in a parking lot above the Louisville & Nashville Railroad tracks. A red truck drives by slowly. And again, slower still. He parks in between two church buildings a block away, with just enough space to watch us. Rudy says, “Grab the cameras and the tripods and get them set up right now.”

Rowletts II

Chromaluxe print from wet plate collodion tintype, 2021