Mitch Eckert is a 2026 Denis Roussel Award Merit Award recipient.
We are pleased to share his work and words here on Rfotofolio.
“In your writing you indicate that your constructed images, “move between shrine, offering,repository and ruin.” Is the shrine like a domestic retablo or a trigger for contemplation? Is your work an offering? To whom? Is your term repository referring to a protected collection where your objects / photographs are managed and curated for study? Does your term ruin indicate that the subjects are in the process of decay or are your images a warning of the decay our environment and chemically treated and plastic wrapped foods are immersed in already?
You write that your work is informed by Dutch still life (I’m presuming the 17th c. work that celebrated all the wonderful things that wealth and privilege could provide) and memento mori, a philosophical construct on living and a reminder that everything dies? From a classicist’s perspective, the term is a lesson that it is important to appreciate the moment you are living in and to treat each of those moments with moral integrity. In this context, I’m not sure momento mori works as a term. Are you creating a clear distinction between your refabricated paper containers and what they once held? I suspect you are emphasizing that everything beautiful and delicious has a very brief moment in the sun. I also suspect that the transformation to paper is required to have a substrate that kallitypes can be rendered on. A thought… consider changing the scale of your paper containers as a way of altering the context of the works and emphasizing the sculptural effort you are putting into making the casts. This might bestow the cast-work with a status equal to the kallitype printing process you excel at and the important message of your subjects.… an integrated balance of craft, concept and genres. Great work!” Christopher James
Would you please tell us about yourself?
I am an artist and educator based in Louisville, Kentucky, where I teach photography at the University of Louisville. My studio practice moves among photography, sculpture, and printmaking. I often spend as much time making what will be photographed as I do making the photograph itself. I am drawn to still life, discarded materials, and the ways objects carry evidence of use and time.
I am fairly quiet and curious by nature, and I like long periods of absorbed studio work. Teaching is also an important part of my life. Sharing photography’s history and craft with students keeps me learning and questioning my own assumptions. Away from the classroom, I am usually in the studio, reading, listening to music, or spending time with my family, our dog, and our cat.
Where did you get your photographic training?
My formal photographic training began at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art, where I earned my B.F.A. while studying photography and sculpture. I continued at Ohio University, earning an M.F.A. with an emphasis on photography and printmaking. I first approached these as separate disciplines, but over time they began to inform one another. Sculpture now affects how I construct objects and spaces for the camera, while photographic printmaking shapes how I think about the photograph as a physical object.
Who has had an influence on your creative process?
The greatest influence on my creative process, however, may be childhood. Children make things from whatever is available, invent worlds, and follow their curiosity without first deciding whether the result will be useful or successful. That feels close to how I work now. I try to show up consistently and make room for play. Consistency gives play a place to happen, and play allows something unexpected to enter the work.
Please tell us about an image not your own that has stayed with you over time.
Minor White’s Moenkopi Strata, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah has stayed with me for many years. I have always been drawn to abstraction, and this photograph gives me the pleasure of recognizing a landscape while never quite being able to settle its scale. The strata could be monumental formations seen from a distance or a small eroded surface viewed close up. My eye keeps trying to organize the photograph, but the image resists becoming a single, stable description.
It reminds me that a photograph does not have to explain everything. It can remain grounded in the physical world while opening onto something ambiguous and imagined. Each time I look at it, I feel briefly oriented and then lost again. That tension between recognition and uncertainty keeps bringing me back.
What image of yours would you say taught you an important lesson?
At the moment, I cannot point to only one image. Nearly every photograph I am making teaches me patience, presence, and the importance of remaining open to change. Constructing a new tableau can feel like playing a large game of Jenga. The elements shift, and sometimes the entire set collapses just as I think I am ready to photograph it.
I try not to treat the collapse as an interruption or failure. It belongs to the process. Sometimes a fallen wall, a displaced object, or an opening created by the collapse produces a much stronger photograph than the arrangement I planned. Several recent images came directly from those accidents. They have taught me to stay present long enough to recognize what an unexpected moment might offer.
Please tell us about the work you submitted to the Denis Roussel Award.
The work I submitted comes from, Everlasting Remains, a portfolio I recently completed. It brings together my longstanding interest in still life with my growing concern about the environmental consequences of everyday consumption.
The project began when I became conscious of how much waste I was personally generating. I started saving plastic produce containers from the grocery store and molded Styrofoam from online purchases. Once I collected these materials instead of immediately discarding them, the volume became impossible to ignore. These objects might be useful for only a few days or even a few minutes, but their material afterlife is far longer.
I initially arranged the plastic packages into compositions that echoed well-known Dutch still lifes. The lightweight, transparent containers were difficult to stabilize and render sharply under the lighting conditions I use, so I began pressing paper pulp into them and using the original packaging as molds. Once dry, the solid paper casts preserved the industrial shapes of the plastic while transforming them into something handmade and giving them greater visual and metaphorical weight.
What began as a technical solution became central to the meaning of the project. I combine the casts with altered artificial fruit to build still-life tableaux. Real food is absent; both the packaging and its contents survive through substitutes. In several photographs, I also project details of historic Dutch still-life paintings across the physical arrangements during the exposure, allowing images of abundance to merge with contemporary forms of waste.
The Dutch still-life tradition often connects abundance with decay and loss. My photographs turn that idea around: the food is quickly consumed and disappears, but the packaging remains. I imagine what future researchers might learn from our discarded waste and what it might reveal about our reliance on plastic and convenience.
I photograph the completed tableaux and hand-print the images as toned kallitypes a process that dates from the late 1880’s. The process’s earthen tonal range allows contemporary debris to appear as though it has passed through time or been newly excavated. For me, the slow transformation from plastic container to paper cast to handmade photograph is inseparable from what the work is trying to say.
What part of image-making do you find the most rewarding?
I am an object maker as much as I am a photographer, and I enjoy working with my hands. The most rewarding part is remaining physically involved with the image from beginning to end. That includes casting and altering objects, constructing a tableau, shaping the light, and carrying the photograph into the darkroom.
I enjoy mixing the chemistry, coating each sheet of paper, making the exposure, agitating the developer trays, and watching the image emerge. The photograph begins with objects I have made and ends as another object made by hand. That continuity is what I find most satisfying.
How do you work through times when nothing seems to work?
I tend to work on several projects at the same time, which is especially helpful when something is not working. If one project reaches a difficult point, I can shift my attention to another instead of forcing a solution. Moving between projects keeps me engaged, helps prevent burnout, and gives the first project time to settle. When I return to it, I often see it differently.
Sometimes, however, the best decision is to stop working altogether. Continuing to push can make me more frustrated and less able to see what is actually in front of me. I might call it a day, take a walk, change the scenery, and enter a different headspace. A solution may come the next morning or not until the following week, often after I have stopped trying to force it. Stepping away does not abandon the work; it gives the problem room to change in my mind. I have learned to trust that pause.
What tools have you found essential in the making of your work?
Time is the ultimate tool. For me, that means managing it deliberately and protecting regular studio hours. Cameras, lights, materials, and chemistry all matter, but none of them can do the work if I am not present. Patience and persistence matter just as much. Some processes cannot be rushed, and some ideas need time before they reveal what they might become.
Is there something in photography that you would like to try in the future?
I am interested in exploring 3D imaging. Because so much of my practice begins with physical objects and constructed spaces, I am curious about what might happen when those constructions can be experienced from multiple viewpoints rather than through a single fixed photograph.
I would also like to place photographic images directly onto the objects I make. I don’t know whether that will involve sensitizing the objects and working with them in the darkroom or using some kind of image-transfer process. I am drawn to the possibility that an object could become both the subject of the photograph and its physical support, making the image and object inseparable. At this point, I want to leave the method open and allow experimentation to determine the direction.
Thank you Mitch.
To learn more about the work of Mitch Eckert please click on his name.
