Beyond Darkness and Light

"Forest Dream, Study 1" (Photo and copyright by Edgar Angelone)

November 9, 2011

By Claire Sykes

We emerge from darkness into darkness, and for nine months float blindly in the pitch. Then we hurl ourselves out into the only world we think we know, until darkness hauls us back. Between two slabs of infinity our lives are mere sparks, as night turns to day turns to night. For millennia, we’ve taken what we’ve made of all that darkness and light, and shaped it into myth and meaning—and art.

"Oceana, Study 14" (Photo and copyright by Edgar Angelone)

We now know that light lives a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation perceived by the retina, telling us what is possible for us to see, from sheen to shadow. Darkness is the absence of light. Yet, they are no more separate from each other than silence and sound, or the colors of the rainbow bleeding one into the next. Only our minds make a distinction between darkness and light, enough to come up with two different words for them. But both are constantly moving toward or away from each other, like river water following the ocean tides or breathing in the wind. Meanwhile, light lets us see into the darkness, and darkness lets in the light.

It’s the same, often, with the darkness and light of our own lives. When we allow ourselves to feel so deeply that we suffer, we also open ourselves to great joy: Afternoon storm clouds pull a curtain on the day, but after the rains the wet streets shimmer. We hang onto hope through despair: Why else does a tree with a shadow stand in the sun? We accept our weaknesses and in so doing find inner strength: Lightning flashes more brightly at midnight than at noon. Only when we unearth our dark sides can we know ourselves more fully: It’s why it takes a night sky to see the stars.

The darkness and light in Edgar Angelone’s book of platinum-print photographs, Beyond Darkness and Light, begin with his medium-format view camera, its interior a cave of night with no fire. Then, that split-second shutter release strikes the film with light, igniting the visual possibilities. The darkroom, a sort of camera itself, takes a picture of the picture, as the enlarger exposes the negative onto light-sensitive paper.

"Iron Horse" (Photo and copyright by Edgar Angelone)

As much as the making of Angelone’s images require just the right interplay of darkness and light, these two sides of his own life come through in his work. How can they not? Sure, in his photographs I see narrow cobblestone lanes, concentric archways, rocky seascapes and tree limbs weighed down by snow. But it’s in the shades of gray and shadowed corners, gleaming sweeps and winks of glint, hovering luster and crepuscular shifts that his work ushers me beyond a sense of place.

"Infantry Terrace Pass, Presidio of San Francisco" (Photo and copyright by Ed Angelone)

"Oceana, Study 47" (Photo and copyright by Ed Angelone)

"Winterscapes, Study 3" (Photo and copyright by Ed Angelone)

I love Angelone’s picture of two oak trees. The inky branches of one, thick with moss, stretch across the frame as if reaching toward some unseen calling, while the other, veiled in fog, spreads open in its entirety like a white, lacy fan. What struggles have those dark branches known, answered now by the promise of wholeness?

"Oak Trees, Study 1" (Photo and copyright by Ed Angelone)

Blacks and whites and nuances of each define an object’s contour and depth. But Angelone takes the tonalities a step further when he slams a stone stairway with tenebrous heft, shocked by an angled radiance that intimates a nearby window’s band of brilliant sunlight. Here, the light mystifies as much as the darkness envelops.

"Fort Point, Study 6 Presidio of San Francisco" (Photo and copyright by Edgar Angelone)

Both also sharpen the geometry and patterns of place, from the rectangularity of that window and those illuminated steps to the curved lines of a Frank Lloyd Wright and the stripes of the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Marin Civic Center, Study 18" (Photo and copyright by Edgar Angelone)

"Iron Horse" (Photo and copyright by Ed Angelone)

In this photograph of the bridge, the span swings trapezesque through a blackness with the gravity of emptiness, the bridge’s steel cables on either side like the strings of a harp.

We define what we see not only by what’s revealed in the light, but also by what we create from that, if only in our minds. Darkness makes that happen. Darkness also leads us out of the light, and can send us from presence to transcendence.

In his photographs, whether it’s the glow of mist drifting gossamer through the evergreens,

"Fog and Trees, Study 1" (Photo and copyright by Ed Angelone)

a blustery dusk rippling the water

"Oceana, Study 35" (Photo and copyright by Edgar Angelone)

or ocean and sky dissolving the horizon in a thousand faces of gray,

"Oceana, Study 31" (Photo and copyright by Edgar Angelone)

Angelone’s darkness and light take us right to the place where he pointed his lens. And we find ourselves somewhere else.

(Copyright by Edgar Angelone)

Words © 2011 by Claire Sykes. All rights reserved.
Images © 2011 by Edgar Angelone. All rights reserved.

This essay of mine appears in Angelone’s new book, Beyond Darkness and Light (Aperture F64 Editions, 2011). The 74-page hardcover edition, due out December 2011, features 54 duotone images on European silk matte paper. Luscious! For more about Angelone and his book, please visit www.edgarangelone.com and www.darknessandlightbook.com.

~

Born and raised in Argentina, fine-art photographer Edgar Angelone works as a private-practice neuropsychologist by day and dips his hands in darkroom chemicals by night, taking photographs whenever he can. He has won numerous prestigious international black-and-white photography competitions for his work that has been published in several photography magazines; and shown in galleries throughout the United States, Southeast Asia, South Africa and Europe. His photographs also enjoy collections at the Marin County Civic Center, The Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Society and Santa Clara Medical Center. He lives in San Rafael, California with his wife and three children.

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