The Known, The Unknown, and the Transcendent

A few years ago, a friend of mine, a symphony maestro, was walking with me through my studio/gallery and remarked that I should compose a book, the title of which would be “The Known, the Unknown, and the Transcendent.” Tom was a true intellectual, a visionary who never allowed a conversation to descend into petty differences and discussions about equipment, etc. It was always about the art, beauty, and ideas.

I thoroughly enjoy those kinds of conversations since they almost always stimulate me to think beyond what is currently “front of mind” and, perhaps, see things differently than I have been. Tom passed a few years ago, so he was never able to write the essay on the subject as he had promised. Here, then, is a visual tribute to Maestro Tom Hohstadt, sans essay.

So, what do I mean by “The Known, the Unknown, and the Transcendent”? The word “transcendent” is very interesting to me. Something that is transcendent goes beyond the normal limits or boundaries because it is more significant than them. People must understand something about my photography work: I am not normal! I have never been normal and have no aspiration of being normal, and that goes back as far as I can remember, as well as to how I see things and how they are interpreted by me in my darkroom.

For instance, I was hiking in a remote area of southern Utah. I had the good fortune to be all alone on a particular day, and it had been a very long one. Beginning at 4:00 AM, the hike had taken me several miles deep into the badlands in southern Utah. It had become late in the day, and it was time to hike out because overnight stays and camping are not allowed in the area. The decision to take a route that covered several red rock hills became a fortunate one because, along the route out, I came upon the most amazing pattern. I got out my camera, set it up, and made this photograph. I immediately knew in the field what I would do with it. The thought that came to mind as I looked at it on the ground glass of my camera was, “What if Columbus had seen this 10 days into his voyage... worst nightmare, right?” So, this is called “The Whirlpool at the Edge of the Earth.”

I can hear the panic in his voice now! “Meninos, estevan passando!” Of course, he was yelling in Portuguese. We would yell in English, “Boys, we’re going over!” Of course, none of that is true. There was no whirlpool, and I was not on the edge of the Earth. The task, as a photographer, was to tell that story, though, as best I could.

Dabbling into the technical part of this for a moment: The scene, as it was presented, was very flat—low in contrast—with the difference between the lightest area and the darkest area being ½ stop. But there also was the sky behind it, which was several stops brighter, and to make the illusion complete, I had to include some of the sky. So, there was a huge difference between the luminance of the red rock pattern and the sky behind it.

Because this was red rock sandstone, with hues that were mostly in the red part of the spectrum, with some yellow as well as gray and near white, I used a dark green filter, a #61 filter, which increased the contrast by about another half stop. To deal with the very bright background, I dodged the sky area in the camera by moving my dark slide up and down in front of the lens. (There is a lot of “by guess and by golly” involved in doing that, but with practice, you kind of learn how to make it work. It has much the same effect as using a graduated neutral density filter, which I didn’t have with me at that time, and it's more subtle.) I then increased the development time of the film to add another couple of stops of contrast and painted the red rock section of the wet negative with a solution of selenium toner and water with a drop of wetting solution. Being able to then print the negative onto a high-contrast photographic paper allowed me to get what I wanted. In succeeding columns, I will address some of these techniques, which I think will be interesting, especially for people interested in learning to use film.

So, what I often do is to portray the work I do as metaphors. I want to present my photographs as something they are not, but in exposing the film and making the print in my darkroom, the material presented becomes something different—hopefully, something more—than what it literally is.

About my photographic work—and yes, I do regard it as work. Many years ago, I chose to use large format black-and-white as my means of expression. At that time, large format was the ultimate in image quality. The negatives coming out of a 4x5 camera are 20 times larger than those from a 35mm camera and three or four times larger than those of a medium format camera. Add to that the ability to use the various adjustments that are unique to large format cameras, and it is nearly the perfect tool for a landscape photographer. Remember that, at that time, there was no digital. Had digital been available, the choice might have been different; I have no way of knowing. But at that time, there was no question that using large format cameras and black-and-white film gave me the greatest amount of flexibility, the most control over the image, and the greatest opportunity to be able to put on paper what I saw and felt with my mind and emotions.

So, presently I continue to use these large, cumbersome, awkward, heavy, and increasingly expensive-to-use cameras to depict the landscape that I so dearly love. Because they are ponderously slow to use, and because everything has to be set by hand, they require great precision and purpose in operation. Using these cameras makes severe demands physically, mentally, and emotionally. The obvious advantage is that, because they are slow to operate, they require more consideration before opening the shutter. In fact, I often enter into a “zone” where I become unaware of what’s going on around me.

For my landscape work, my preference is always a 4x5 view camera and black-and-white film. Although a digital camera is almost always nearby, the large cameras get used first. Occasionally, I do make a digital image if I think I may want a color image later. Following is a brief portfolio of my images.t

This was a very difficult exposure.  Light was fading fast and it was almost impossible to find critical focus.   finally arrived at a conclusion and made the exposure using 47XL lens on my Toyo 45A camera. Exposure was 2 1/2 minutes at f/22.

I used Kodak T-Max 100 film that I get from B&H. I have since switched to using Kodak T-Max 400 film, again from B&H.