MARGET
LONG



About
News
Publications

The Medium is the Mirage

Mathew Brady’s Skylight
Mathew Brady’s Skylight
Rearranging Canon Balls
Blanks I
Blanks II
Visiting Cards
Everyone I Owe

Artist Books
Flash + Cube (1965-1975)
When I Was a Mirage
Removing James Franco 

Hunting Blinds
Nature Valley

Film + Video

Blanks II, 2012

The Mathew Brady photographs used in Blanks II are sourced from the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, Daguerreotypes Collection (1840–1860). These digital files are precise records of something—the daguerreotypes’ deteriorated material state at the moment of the archivist’s scan. They are also, paradoxically, perfect records of the wrong thing: images that no longer hold representational value as Brady portraits. Or do they?

By the end of his long and illustrious career, Mathew Brady had almost no assets. Bankrupt and studio-less, he lost most of his negatives to creditors. Long selected daguerreotypes marked by the archivist’s note “Image Deteriorated Beyond Recognition.” The 12-megapixel TIFFs were downloaded and, following Brady’s own taste for spectacle and excess, digitally embellished further beyond recognition.

Long also spent well beyond their budget on Adobe vector graphics.

{UNDER CONSTUCTION}





PHOTOHOUSE37  
Commercial photography for non-profit organizations.

LINK TO MY HACKED DOMAIN 




Copyright, Marget Long, All rights reserved, 2025