Joan Tortorici Ruppert

Joan Tortorici Ruppert

Credit: Joan Tortorici Ruppert

About Joan Tortorici Ruppert

I'm a media content writer/producer with credits in U.S. broadcast and cable television. Several years ago I inherited a trove of photographic negatives shot and developed by my father during the late 1930s to mid 1950s in and around Chicago, Illinois. I culled and scanned the collection, concentrating first on presenting the images uncropped and largely unaltered in an effort to replicate exactly what he first saw in the darkroom. It's my understanding that my dad, who died in 1964, did not have access to an enlarger. With that in mind, my approach was to regard each scan as a contact print, and I was fiercely loyal to this methodology. Later on, however, I decided that if I were to step out of that box and alter the images, those alterations had to be radical. That quest inspired me to isolate individual people in the original images by stripping all context and re-imagining them in entirely new environments. Out of nearly 1,000 original images, only about a dozen (thus far!) have been re-imagined with a technique that involves mechanically cutting into a paper print and then holding the print in one hand while shooting through the print with a camera in my other hand. It's a bit of a ballet, always unpredictable, and never repeatable. Gardens – with all their glorious colors in contrast to the grainy black-and-white images – are a favorite setting. For me, the best part about all this is that I'll never run out of opportunities to explore my dad's original images. This connection brings me limitless joy.


Professional roles: Journalist

Location: United States