New Monochrome

With a print, I’ll sit with a two-dimensional surface and see tonal variations throughout. I’ll eye lines and shapes and bring meaning to what’s constructed inside my mind.

Monochrome photography originated in salt and silver and has been with us through wars and depressions and Film Noir movies, yet what if we had invented color photography first?

I chased realism, and the harder I tried, the more exactness escaped my camera, but with film, the process became a ritual. I love standing beside my large-format camera because I value what goes into each picture and admire how a print functions long after recollection fades.

If you’re like me and born after the invention of color analog, we’re far outside photography’s early history and probably seeing grayish images as older, yet many new monumental monochromes have yet to find their way to us.