In his Mixed Media collection, L.A. based artist Alex Gross found vintage portraits and re-imagined the Victorians as superheroes and villains. The crazy costumes notwithstanding, the effect contemporizes the solemn faces of Civil War veterans, society matrons, and school boys with our modern, pop-culture obsessed world. I’ve always felt remorse for the long-forgotten people in those discarded photographs in the bins of dusty antiques stores but now at least some of them have been rescued from obscurity. Gross has released a book called Now and Then: The Cabinet Card Paintings, available on Amazon, that includes photos of the original images before their transformations.
For more information, please visit the artist’s website.
-Jayme Catalano