White Shadow

photographs by
Tono Stano

All old-school photographers know that black-and-white film typically registers a negative image of the subject of a photograph, which can then be printed as a positive image on paper for final viewing. What looks dark on a negative becomes light on a print. But what happens when an artist decides to play with this paradigm by aiming to make the final image a negative image that looks like a positive image?

Slovakian photographer Tono Stano has been artfully exploring this idea since the 1990s, and the results are wonderful, delightful, surreal, and hard to deconstruct. Lens Culture is pleased to present a dozen of our favorite images from Stano's series titled White Shadow.

A video in the Lens Culture blog offers an inspiring behind-the-scenes look at the artist at work in his studio. Cheers!

– Jim Casper


Be sure to view the high-resolution slideshow of these images for the greatest appreciation of each.