Show & Tell -- September/October

Mostly, it’ll be show.

The central dilemma faced by photographers of my generation revolves around the revolution of digital capture, reproduction and dissemination. Those sound like three different things but are instead a slender string of craft applied that ends in the achievement of creative purpose; whether that purpose is purely documentary, to reinvent reality or whatever. And with revolution the whole thing’s been made different, in a flash.

Not long ago this Search for Perfect Light would necessarily have taken place in private. Then I’d have completed the year of gathering, collated the material, reproduced the best of it, tied it all together in the finest presentation I could manage and tried to publish. With revolution the whole thing’s been made different and here I am walking a creative tightrope, sorta live.

And of course, not long ago I’d have enjoyed a steady supply of large format film to burn through at my leisure, instead of the last in the world to work through with pride, which is why we’re here.

Fine reproduction is the noblest end for any image, hung upon a well lit wall and appreciated from appropriate viewing distance. That's especially so for any image that wasn’t conceived of pixels to begin with because so much is lost in the translation of film for digital delivery.

The chasm between what my field work on film actually looks like and how it appears onscreen is aesthetically irresolvable. But because I’m asking you to follow along, I’ve a responsibility to deliver at least some of it all the same.

So this is what I’ve come up with.

Later there’ll likely be somewhat higher quality versions of these clips available for viewing through my website, but for now here’s short selection scanned from both 4x5 and 120mm chromes, culled from the hundreds generated to date and set to a traditional American song in an exquisite arrangement by the great Ry Cooder: