"In 1859 Edwin L. Drake, working for the Seneca Oil Company in Pennsylvania, drilled the first modern oil well, ushering in the beginning of America's oil boom and our worldwide dependence on this resource. At the same time, the wet collodion photographic process that I will be using for this project was revolutionizing what photography could capture, ultimately changing the way people saw the world. The use of oil would expand until modern life could not exist as we know it without a continual supply." - Phil Nesmith

[curated and irvine contemporary]