Return to the Backyard

These photographs are old. By my standards at least. I shot them a couple of years ago in the backyard of my parents' house. I had little experience with the 4x5 camera and resorted to a gut instinct when determining exposure times. It was night and I hijacked a few garage lights from my dad and let them illuminate only those subjects within their shallow range. The light was sucked into the darkness beyond a certain distance where the open space of the backyard offered nothing to reflect it.

Light. It reveals and conceals. It alters our perception and plays tricks on our minds by way of our eyes. We assert reality as what we can see. But still we cling to the belief that things remain even as darkness absorbs them. We close our eyes and the world does not drop away. We have faith that things must exist in the dark so that we can see them in the light. In a way, darkness exists so that by contrast there is light.

The simplest of our innate associations ties lightness to the good and darkness to evil. And so does mutual reliance exist in the relationship of the good and the bad. In the same way light emerges from the dark, so does goodness from evil. Goodness exist only by comparison to that which it is not.

These images rely formally and contextually on the contrast of light and dark. A beautiful young girl is revealed in the expanse of black. Her posture is classically theatrical. Is her pose accidental or meant to be seen? Without the attention of the light, she would melt into the void of the unseen. She seems unaware of the lights betrayal of her privacy though her body is perfectly static. She is frozen. Frozen in the confines of a suburban backyard clothed in a dress reminiscent of a 50s house wife.

She exists in the darkness with no choice but to reflect the light.

To my beautiful sister, Emily:

I will never stop shining light on you.