Goodness + Truth Studio is a tintype portraiture project of NYC-based artist Eric Thornton. The project encourages collaboration, and has included the artists Amanda L Kreuger (Aug-Nov 2020), Nicolas Umpierrez (2021-4), Charlotte Miller (2022-4), and Timothy Chapman (2023-4), all hailing from a wide variety of creative backgrounds. It is a moveable and often public project which uses this 19th-century medium for contemporary portraiture. Having originally taken unofficial residency in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park, the studio travels for work on-location, and is currently taking studio residency at Please Space, in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Tintype is an antique photographic method producing unique, handmade images. Inherent to this chemical process, each photograph is made from scratch to finish, on site. Everyone who handles a tintype of themselves or a loved-one understands the intrinsic value of these irreplicable and precious artefacts. Many report that the medium has a certain ancestral, ethereal quality. Considered fast and cheap in its heyday, tintype democratized portraiture, making it available in the United States to liberated Black people, immigrants, and the White working class. 

We are only half-joking when we refer to tintype as the original Polaroid; it is conspicuously labor-intensive, yet the outcome is practically instant. The sitter sees each step of the object being made, and the process culminates with them witnessing their own visage emerge, literally, from the ether. For lack of a better term—everyone freaks out. The process earned its moniker “the black art” because to the uninitiated, it seems like magic. (To us, even now, it still does!)

We founded Goodness + Truth in August 2020 to connect with people through our art in Fort Greene Park. At first, we set no expectations other than to make portraits of some passers-by, but were stunned by the response we received. We found that, having lived in deep social isolation and virtual spaces, New Yorkers re-emerged into public spaces with a new appetite for simple pleasures: bike rides, picnics, walks in the park. Exhausted by digital images, people have a renewed appreciation for the tactile. And, having a portrait made in tin is more than a means to an end; to us, the effectiveness of tintype as a means of connection and dialogue with our public is its true beauty.