THE WINDOW IN MY DREAMS

On this date 6 years ago, I posted the photo essay below on my T&L Photos website that was my final project for one of my photography classes at the university back in 1981. The introduction and concluding photos in the series were typeset on paper by a local typesetter, I photographed the pages with my 4X5 view camera and reversed processed the negatives into positives so when I printed the sheet film I got white letters on a black background. I made each photo with a combination of long exposures and manually triggered flashes to capture movement with some clarity in the images. I had to carefully calculate each exposure and plan the details of each shot to successfully execute each photograph because I could not preview each shot before I processed the negatives. Only one 4X5 negative was exposed for each print in this series. The project was a major undertaking.

I noticed the writing was not my best back then. I didn’t have a personal computer, so I didn’t write nearly as much as I do today. These days, I would never use “Sometimes I venture into the deepest shafts of my mind, into a room…” How clunky is that? I would change it to something like “Sometimes I wandered through the deepest recesses of my twisted mind, into a room…”

Click on the gallery to see the photos larger.

I would rewrite the conclusion, as well:

“As the images behind the window faded, I turned to find my way back to reality. Teetering on the edge of consciousness, I looked back to see my shadow hanging in the window, I was guilty of the execution of photography.”