Shadow
Starting with the obvious: an area of darkness where light is blocked by an object. Turning that on its nose: an area of lightness that is blocked by an object's darkness. Transforming it into the metaphysical: The presence of an object as expressed by its absense. Adding in symbolism: The evidence of existence made apparent by way of darkness.
In a way, these shadows are mirrors as well: a representation of an object - an exact double (depending on the angle and bend of the light) is created by way of projection. I can stand up straight and see myself growing from my feet, outward, expanding in a dense mass of lightlessness.
It's a common motif in fiction: light and dark, shape and shadow. The stock character has this darker self that he carries beside him all through the day, and at night the shadow grows even deeper in its dimness. We have the man and his "dark side" married together on the page; this needs little critical examination.
Sometimes the shadows of things are more fascinating than the things themselves - several of the above photos are examples of that. The first photo is of an old church on Mission Street in San Francisco, one of the older churches in the city. There is something interesting (to my eye, at least) about the way in which the shadow envelopes the smaller building in the foreground which I assume is a Rectory while leaving the sunlight to fall wonderfully on the bricked side of the church leaving the windows untouched by shadow: I can't help but think of how James Joyce would write about it. The second photo is perhaps one of the only examples of a non-shadow (or "negative-shadow" or "un-shadow") that I was pleased to capture on the ceiling of my living room -- it tricks the eye by way of being reversed. The "shadow" is actually the projected light from a floor lamp that happens to land on the dimmed wall/ceiling in such a way as to form a loosely shaped Heart. It is inside out: rather than being the dark object blocked by the projection of light on an object, instead what is created is a shadow made of light. The third photo only becomes important in its symbolic value afterwords, in retrospect: the photo shows a dog heading from the outside into the inside, passing through from sun into shadow. There are several threads of conflict to flesh out here: nature vs. manmade, light vs. dark, inside vs. outside -- most of these can be condensed even further into the standard: Life vs Death. To read this photo the way one would read a paragraph it is easy to see the hidden meaning that comes only later, a year or a decade after the photo was taken -- the blind fact that the subject of the photo is now dead, she has walked from the light of the world into the darkness of a confined, boxed in space. The fourth photo is a representation of the way shadows come and go, as described in a top-bottom-diptych. Above one notes the swooping splash of light that seems to invade and fend off the shadows while below the rigid angles of architecture are forced onto the surface of yet more architecture. This piling effect is magnifiscent. The final photo is possibly one of the easiest to understand: a shadow cast on a white wall. As the object moved, so did its shadow. The objects in real life third dimensional space do not ever overlap, matter simply wont allow it, yet when projected onto the flatness of a wall -- we see the overlapment, like two ghosts. I find this to be a wonderful bit of lucidity: finally an instance where something is possible in the flattened second dimension yet not at all possible in the actual third dimension that we inhabit. I smile: simpler places often promote more complex experiences -- as is starkly portrayed via the photograph. The overlapping of things, the wonderful overlapping of things.
