SHADOW PLAY

My cousin and I chanced upon a marvelous Man Ray & Lee Miller exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.  (You can follow the link for information and videos.  The exhibit ends soon.)  Though the focus of the exhibit was the collaboration and personal relationship between the two, the images rekindled my fascination for Surrealism and monochrome photography.

René Magritte, one of my favorite surrealists, once said (paraphrased here) that his paintings were meant to cloak the ordinary and banal in mystery.  Perhaps that is what I like about chasing shadows in black & white.  The resulting images might not necessarily be surrealist.  But they are cloaked in mystery.

So, I dove through my archives searching for old, black & white shadow images.

Branch shadows on our backyard wall
from the old house

Ordinary objects metamorphose and sprout new dimensions within their shadows.  Sometimes sinister. Other times, softened.  It's like trying to spot shapes in the clouds.  And who's to say what the truth is -- the tangible mass or the shadow it casts?  

Tree shadows on the backyard wall
from the old house

Interestingly, shadow scenes seem rather Oriental to me.  Perhaps because they bring to mind back-lit silhouettes, shuffling quietly behind Japanese paper screens.

Shadows in the Master Balcony
from the new house

Wouldn't it be great to slide the screen shut and melt into the shadows until ready to come out in full color?