“The image must have authenticity, emotion, something on a different level than the visual,” Angelina Kidd says when asked to list the most important elements of her photography. The emotive power of a scene, she emphasizes, is more important than a technically perfect shot. And since the gallery of recent artwork on her website is populated by human skulls, ghoulish apparitions and even a dead bird, one might agree that her grasp meets her reach—after all, what could be more authentic or emotional than death?

But despite dealing with mortality and the passage of time in many of her photographs, Kidd cites playfulness and fun as two essential elements of her style. “People think of death as something mournful, depressing,” she says. “Who’s to say the dead aren’t really living as well?” The juxtaposition of macabre elements like human bones and ghostly silhouettes with whimsical touches—tiny flower pots, ornate party hats, thumb-sized dolls—is signature Kidd, a style both visually striking and laden with interpretive meaning. It’s a style that has gotten her noticed: her photograph “Crow Shit” recently won best in show at the 2011 Toyed With exhibition, part of the Durango Showcase of the Arts.

On top of her chosen subject matter, a key aspect of Kidd’s aesthetic is her use of alternative and historical processes: platinum and palladium, pinhole, Ziatype, wet plate collodion and gelatin silver prints, among others. Not only do these processes tend to produce an antique, timeless effect under her hand; they also reflect, through their use and disuse, the passage of time on another level. “The beauty about doing alternative process is that one day film will be dead,” Kidd says matter-of-factly. “Alternative processes don’t rely on film.” She is similarly tepid to digital photography, citing infinite duplication, the use of Photoshop and the loss of the manual photographic process as drawbacks. “Every photograph I create with an alternative process is unique,” she says. “To do alternative process requires more patience, knowhow, commitment; and [the artwork] is handmade.”

Angelina Kidd is a student in the Master of Fine Arts in Photography program at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Upcoming exhibitions featuring her work include Transferred: Alternative Processes in Photography at Target Gallery in Alexandria, VA, where “I am here” is an official selection (November 5th-27th); and Alternative Focus at Davis Art Gallery in Worcester, MA, where “Why?” and “Waiting” will be featured (November 3rd-January 27th). All of these pieces can be viewed on her website, angelinakidd.com.

–Samuel Morales Flores