Ziggy Rose (they/them) is a Milwaukee-based artist working with analog photography and historically grounded photographic practices, including tintypes, cyanotypes, and other alternative processes, alongside textile-based work. Their practice emphasizes material exploration, process-driven making, and the expressive possibilities of image and craft. Their work has been included in group exhibitions such as Instantaneous in Chicago and Dreams at the Midwest Center for Photography.
Portrait by: Allison Calteux
Artist statement:
My practice explores memory, mortality, and the traces left behind by people, bodies, and materials. Working through analog photography and process-based experimentation, I approach images as physical objects rather than fixed records. I am drawn to the ways photographs deteriorate, transform, and resist preservation—mirroring the instability of memory itself.
Material processes play a central role in my work. Through cyanotype, surface manipulation, and textile integration, I allow chemical unpredictability, wear, and failure to guide the image. Lace, fabric, and found photographic materials reference domestic labor, ritual, and inheritance, situating photography within acts of care and remembrance. My subjects often exist at thresholds—between presence and absence, devotion and decay, intimacy and loss.
Photo By: Jolee Mallmann