The interplay between dark and light has both attracted and captured me since I first picked up a camera as an adult. The very first day I went out with a camera in the late ‘60s I took an image of dirty, almost charred, railroad ties in rural Michigan, stretching into the distance against a patchy, two-day-old snowfall.
While I began this project with the intent of representing some aspects of depression, the images that evolved suggested, if anything, the very little that actually is good about being depressed – the sense of comfort and protection from being separated from the world. The shadows in these picture are not representations of some threatening dark side, but are as rich and nuanced, in my eye, as the light. As Arlo Guthrie pointed out, “You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.”
These images are tied together as being dialogues. Just as a drama does not require its characters to be in constant conflict, these images are certainly not always about “light vs. dark.” In a dramatic dialogue there must be two strong characters, be they enemies, or suitors, or buddies or strangers suddenly thrown together. We feel the dialogue is a success if, at the end, we can’t say who was the “main character.”
