black

The Great Zimbabwe, 1989

For all the importance of light in photography, I am equally taken by the darks. Not just black, but deep velvets with their own luminosity and textures, sometimes more brown or gray, a treasure of detail in a well-made print. The possibilities are governed by physics and chemistry, but achieved with craft and technique. In the darkroom, I would contemplate the heft of an image, trying to understand what is innate in the negative and balance the play of an unexpected whole. I look at prints of photographers from different eras to be reminded of the possibilities, including that black does not have to be black at all.