Cabinet Card Photos Transformed Into Art with Tom Butler

The Photo Detective

This week, Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Tom Butler, an artist whose work may be controversial to some listeners. Tom uses unidentified cabinet cards to create art, often altering the original image to enhance them, which begs the question if he is destroying the image, or creating something even better than before.

Related Episodes:

Bonus Episode: Stitching on Pictures with Stitchography by Emma

Episode 153: Ellis Island Immigrant Photo Identified

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About My Guest:

For the last twelve years artist, Tom Butler has been appropriating anonymous Victorian cabinet cards with incorporated personal symbols such as hair, masks, flowers, and geometric abstractions, painted on the surface with gouache. In the process, he attempts to reveal the imagined personalities of the sitters while in the knowledge that he is cloaking them with parts of himself. He also makes self-portraits and uses cabinet cards and found photographs to create collages, sculptures, and rubbings to express both a love of the medium and a critique of photography as a whole.

Butler was born in London, England and now lives in Portland ME, USA. He studied at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, Chelsea College of Art, UAL, and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. He exhibits internationally and his work can be found in collections such as The British Museum and Soho House.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada. She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira). She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, sc

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