In recent years, tintype photography has met strong revived interest. Tintypes are created as direct positives on thin metal sheets coated with enamel. This studio technique enjoyed its widest use in the 1860s and 70s, when it was applied to produce small-scale photographic portraits for people to carry in their pockets, but also to document the American Civil War. Between nostalgia and novelty, the resuscitation of this procedure could be said to forfeit approaches of abstraction in photography, reverting instead to aesthetics of classical representation. In her Tintype series, Nelson borrows the technique to create geometric volumes in Photoshop, which then appear as positives on metal sheets. Combining analog with digital photography, Nelson generates abstract shapes on dark backgrounds that appear to have oozed out of a science fiction narrative. Her plates are exceptionally large and exceed the portable scale of traditional tintypes. The prints are mounted on triangular volumes that lift them out from the wall, distorting the boundaries between picture plane and physical space of the viewer.