Life By The Neck

Musician Zak Skinner, also featured in the most recent post, playing on a perfect Autumn afternoon at the recent Porchfest in Jefferson City.

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Exhibiting a few noir works this week.

I’ve said before that I believe black and white photography – “Noir”, as I like to call it because, I guess, it sounds cooler – is itself a form of abstraction. The world doesn’t look like this. Add just a little bit of artistry and it really doesn’t look like this. The last time I concentrated on Noir work was last summer’s very successful tornado series. In retrospect, I added filtering in those works that was intended to, and did, emphasize the edging of the tornado ravaged buildings. Now, I think that might have been one bridge too far. The work here, as with the other two that will be exhibited in this week’s blogs, simply plays with the lighting and the color curves.

Color curves in black and white. Well, yeah, baby! That’s one of the most artful techniques.

Returning to Noir photography is, for me, like a visit to the beginning; call it a drive by ‘grounding’. Actually, move backward through the last four posts to find the full range of my work, (click this link to go to the main page, then scroll down) beginning with today’s noir, to three works, each progressively more abstract, all derived from captures made during the same event, in the same lighting, at the same time of day; four very different visions.