MAGIC

I believe that ritual sets the stage for magic to happen.  Photography has always had elements of magic for me.  Now that I am using a small, digital camera, I miss some of the slower rituals of large format photography, such as setting up a tripod, throwing a black cloth over my head to peer at the ground glass, or taking a light reading.   I am intrigued by the mix of ritualistic control and discovery.  The repetition of this orderly process of handling tools and materials is calming and familiar, focusing my senses on the situation at hand, setting in motion the potential for “magic.”  I find that ritual is a well worn, comfortable path, almost meditative, and yet creative surprises often happen for me along that path, connecting me with a long line of people who are “conjurers,” who are discovering, inventing, making and revealing images; I revel in their company.      

I was drawn to the rituals of mid-nineteenth century processes of gum dichromate and cyanoprint, because unlike the standard black and white silver gelatin paper, they are much slower ways of working which allow many opportunities to intervene, to challenge the predictability and make “magic.”  This can result in new or unexpected possibilities, such as choices about pigment color of the light sensitive coating,  weight and color of the paper, as well as where the coating will be applied on the paper.  The first several years of working with gum dichromate and cyanoprints felt like “time travel” because it was as if I had a direct connection with three 19th century “conjurers”, Anna Atkins, Sir John Herschel, and William Henry Fox Talbot, who today we know as photographic pioneers.  The magic of photography transported me into the middle of the nineteenth century and I was “talking”  with these people almost every day as I used the gum dichromate and cyanotype processes.  Anna Atkins, who had worked extensively with cyanoprints, seemed as if she were a close, personal friend.  I traveled to England to see a copy of her British Algae, in the British Library, the first book to be illustrated with photographs (non-camera photograms).  Atkins is still one of my heroes; to this day, I have a reproduction of her work from Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns on my studio wall.  I remember this period of work as a thoroughly engrossing immersion in fundamental photographic principles and history.

Over the years I have found that whatever the process, the approach that appeals to me is to use a way of working, or a technique, with great rigor in order to refine my ability, and simultaneously to be on the alert to jump aside and wander down an avenue which piques my interest, knowing that the depth of discipline can be returned to easily.  Looking over my photographic work, I find that I have changed photography for myself, by mixing the ever-present rituals of control of the photographic processes with the magic that can happen along the way.  The mix of controlled and uncontrolled processes has always felt right.