Maris Rusis
Member
Past Imperfect #8
Gelatin-silver photograph on Ultrafine Silver Eagle VC FB photographic paper, image size 16.4cm X 21.3cm, from a 4x5 Tri-X Pan Professional negative exposed in a Tachihara 45GF double extension field view camera fitted with a 160mm f4 Wollaston Meniscus soft-focus lens and a #25 red filter.
My photographer friend Sparky died after a long long illness and some of his equipment passed into my hands. There were many film holders that he had loaded with Tri-X Pan Professional fifteen years previously but could not expose. The film had corroded through the passage of years but I took it to those places where we had walked with our cameras in times past.
I used the soft focus lens to make an image with an air of strangeness; of this world and yet not of it. The optical signature is strong and overwrites the random defects in the film. The art deco tree is sadly eloquent as it frames the boatmen pushing away from the shore of the lake. The far shore is distant and indistinct; as far shores often are.
This Past Imperfect exposure is of a style Sparky would appreciate and it may offer a quiet memorial to his vision.