French Lumiéres

First Came the Light When asked why I shoot so many photos at night, I explain that I can see better in the dark. I mean that I can better grasp the nature and quality of light when it is cast against a dark background with subdued colors. The clarity of the mostly monochrome light enables me to structure my vision and so compose my images without the distraction of color. Focusing on the light naturally led me to pay more attention to the dark. The more I did so, the more I could see the rich textures hidden in the darkness. From the work of the French painter Pierre Soulages, sometimes called “the painter of black,” I learned that black can also come alive, if you give your eyes the time to discover all the subtle shading and visual effects within. I gained another valuable lesson at a 2016 retrospective of work by the acclaimed American photographer Harry Callahan during his 1957-58 sabbatical in France in. Living in southern France, Callahan became enamored of the quality of the Provençal light. He wandered through the streets of Aix-en-Provence, often at midday, to capture the sharp contrast between the intense southern light and the shadows it cast upon the stone facades of the town’s buildings. The results are astounding. As I marveled through the exhibit, I thought I heard Callahan tell me that I could invert my proclivity for shooting at night, that I could produce ‘negatives’ of my nighttime images by contrasting bright midday light with the shadows it cast. In this book, the images from Aix-en-Provence are the result of Callahan’s (posthumous) advice.