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edizioni FoscoFornio is a small, not-for-profit publisher of practice led Arts research results
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Artist contributors give permission for their text and image, duly credited to be printed in the book and in publicity efforts for the book. The artist retains all rights outside this permitted use
this is a call out to photographers who work on the difference between Light and Dark
-- don't we all ? can you not be more specific?
this is a call out to photographers who play with shadows for effect
-- so what, surely a photograph needs shadow to contribute meaning and emotions?
this is a call out to photographers who think about the differing values we assign to Lightness and Darkness
-- and ... ?
and you are right: shadows play on emotions. I will try again: this is a call out to photographers who question the language of emotions we hang on shadow in this interplay of Light and Dark.
-- we still think you need to be more specific. Is it just any shadow? the shadows beneath a tree? the cast shadow of a tree?
I am sorry, you are having to work quite hard here. Specifically I am asking about the cast shadow and in particular the cast shadow of the person -- the shadow that follows us around. Just now I claimed that we attach values in language to Light and Dark: it seems as if we usually talk in terms of Light revealing virtue and Darkness concealing vice. The metaphoric use of light and dark pervades our language.
-- I see, we definitely need more clarity here
And it is that need for a clear cut distinctiveness that makes us uneasy. We understand the polar extremes of what is Light/visible and Dark/invisible but the cast shadow of the person is real and physical yet un-material and intangible: it seems like it has to occupy a space between Light and Dark So is our cast shadow good or bad, virtuous or vicious ? Not being of us yet always with us we do not know how to relate to it
-- and so ?
and so, to start with, we are looking for photographers of the cast shadow of the person who are able to explore their relationship with the cast shadow in all the uncertainties and doubts that fill any real relationship. Students of [cinema]photography will remember the evil expressed in Nosferatu's shadow; fine art historians will know the legends of St Peter's shadow sufficient to cure the disabled. Perhaps it is more complex than that, indeed a gray area...
-- yes ?
well, somewhere to get started is to think about relationships and the tools and descriptions that psychology provides. Jung was quite clear that we all have a tendency to imagine or project those same uncomfortable characteristics onto other people instead of understanding them as parts of our own nature. So perhaps this call out might address those projections onto other people.
-- hmmm
OK, another starting point might be religion and its frequent ties between light as revelation with darkness as a wrong. It would be interesting to hear from photographic artists who know more of animist beliefs ( of divine presence throughout the non-human world), or shamanic beliefs ( of access to a spirit world). Other creation myths may be helpful.
-- changing direction a little, what do you mean by photology?
Photology begins as a study in the effects of light energy: we make photographs by the impact of light quanta on a recording medium, a photo-sensor, or a silver halide emulsion. So why is a photographic negative? this sort of question takes us a little closer to the roots of the word: photo- for light and -logos meaning knowledge and doctrine. Thus the term photology has been repurposed in critical theory to focus interest on the way in which the language of physics is used to colonise metaphysics. And in the end this project is for photographers who take a fresh look at the cast shadow of the person, even another person; or, who can take a step beyond the cultural comfort zone that light is right and dark is not and the cast shadow can be free of these ties.
-- so far, so good -- we probably have quite a few photographs with our shadows in them.
this is a book project and our readers will need to know in your text more of your thought processes when you made the image and as you think back on it. Your words are going to be needed as a counterpart to the visuality in your image.
