The Light And The Shade
My dreamfingers trace elusive seams of shadow and light
as if in a vast embrace
All those symmetries of opposites
Certainty and uncertainty
Menacing, amicable
Riverchorus flowing in a landscape
Or a forest leaf falling in silence
Throbbing pulse of being, hollow void of absence
Female, male
Just go with the flow
Or, turn against the tide
The light and the shade
The tricolour Irish flag of supposed harmony
With orange and green at either end
My partitioned land’s gospel version of the light and the shade
Two peoples with long memories
Left and right footers aye
protected by a flimsy sheath of white
And in the North both ghettoised groups
Back in the 1970s
Wedged in between two barbed factions of history
Stomping on each other’s messages of truth
In submission to the strifeladen drumbeat
Marching lockstep
to a hymned discord
Unionist ‘No Surrender’
Or Nationalist ‘Our Day Will Come’
Our lot bathed in light
Sniping at the other lot shrouded in shade.
Why can’t we change these old doctrined ways
mired within light and shade?
What’s wrong with peace?
God forbid harmony
So many answered and unanswered questions
The things we know and don’t know
Just go with the flow
Or, turn against the tide
But isn’t there so much more?
There’s a whole spectrum in between
An arc of light and shade in motion
So ready to live and love
Without end
As the sun thrives in a blue-heavened sky
Without end
So, my life veers through light and shade
The shade and the light
Reversed so the feckin’ balance stays fixed
No matter what
Like the stars
In a well-chiselled universe
Carved out of nothingness
And yet it all serves as our saviourchild
Those celestial fragments
Spinning and spinning
Down all the years
With and without end
Eternal and finite
Yang, Yin
Just like light and shade
But the music plays out
A mocking trumpet echoes
through those recessed thoughts
best forgotten
Too much darkness, not enough light
Sometimes deafening, sometimes quiet
In the corners of memories
Deeply held and clenched hard
In the gut of being
Where those past voices and laughter
Still have a ring of truth
Deep in the lifesoul of recall
Emerging strong, vibrant
And suddenly
A fleeting memory
Ripping open
A fleeting life event
of long ago
But even long ago has light and shade
And the film held inside the mind
Retains forever youthfulness
And all that edge
That energy
Limitless
Just flowing, as it does
How can I grow old?
And all this
because of my trying to explore
The shade and the light
Laughter and tears
Peace and war
Warmth of love, pain of terror
All those symmetries of opposites
Just go with the flow
Or, turn against the tide
Does it ever end?
The light and the shade.
-A poem by Nicholas Mackey
What thoughts come to mind when I ponder on the phrase, ‘the light and the shade’ in relation to art?
The first image that pops up into my consciousness is an eerie work by the British artist, Joseph Wright of Derby called ‘An Experiment On A Bird In An Air Pump’, painted in 1768.
I was eight years old when I first saw this painting in the National Gallery, London and it made a huge impression on me. I can recall having nightmares afterwards. At the time as a child, I was struck by the inherent cruelty in the scene portrayed, and wondered if the scientific experiment could have been done without causing suffering or death to another living creature – in this case a white bird (a cockatiel to be exact) shown trapped in a rounded glass vessel. But later on, as I got older, the work haunted my imagination for another reason. I couldn’t get over the fact of how an artist had managed to capture the scene of a groundbreaking scientific experiment imbued with inherent cruelty, and yet painted in this eye-catching chiaroscuro style that draws you into every minute detail of the picture. Joseph Wright’s understanding of the interplay of light in these poorly illuminated conditions was uncanny, and his skill in reproducing such spellbinding artwork on canvas, that continues to beguile to this day, is a testament to his vastly underrated prowess as a painter. What I also came to appreciate about this striking imagery were the various pictorial ‘sub-plots’ going on at the same time as the main event depicted. If you look closely, you’ll see what I mean.
As a photographer, I admire the work of Joseph Wright of Derby immensely, as well as an inspirational forerunner of his; Caravaggio who lived more than one and a half centuries before in what is now Italy. One of my favourite paintings of this Milanese artist is ‘The Taking Of Christ’, of circa 1602 which, after many adventures, came to be hung in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Christ_(Caravaggio)
Within one work of art, one sees drama, beauty, humanity, treachery, brute force, vulnerability, and sheer excellence in artistic craftmanship while working with light and shade. Also, bear in mind, Caravaggio produced paintings of this stature while on the run for an alleged murder he’d committed.
Both of these artists I’ve just described above and others (e.g. Rembrandt van Rijn, Leonardo Da Vinci, Clara Peeters and Rachel Ruysch to name just several) active in this field, had chosen one of the trickiest art forms to work in: chiaroscuro. The etymology of the word is Italian meaning ‘light-dark’ and it involves the use of strong contrasts in the subject matter being painted. Or, viewed from the photographic perspective, trying to get a picture in iffy lighting conditions, especially without a flash. Over the years, I’ve set myself the test of taking photos at daybreak or dusk or when the lighting is most definitely challenging. As a self-imposed rule, I very rarely use flash so that means working with available light. And that’s where I often come a cropper, as they say in Kinnegad. If the truth be told, I either get parts of the picture over- or under-exposed while managing to catch at least part of the imagery in a visible fashion. But when working in subdued (sometimes very subdued) lighting conditions and then succeeding in getting ALL of the picture on film, decently exposed so the entire photo can be viewed easily, is the supreme triumph for a photographer.
Experts in chiaroscuro with a camera at the ready are numerous, but let me count off the following who are worthy of your attention: Brassaï, Edward Weston, Annie Liebovitz, Mario Testino, Diane Arbus and Suzanne Moxhay. There are many more.
As for my own efforts in this genre of creative imagery, let you be the judge of some of my pictures shown here that emerged relatively unscathed from my camera.
Permit me to recount the tale of one of them: ‘Fencing In Action’.
It was 15 years ago in Antalya, Turkey and I was a spectator at the World Fencing Championships being held in this beautiful city, with an amazing heritage, in the eastern Mediterranean – a city frequented by the Roman emperor and general, Hadrian in ancient times; yes, the same chap who built a certain wall of historic proportions bearing his moniker separating Scotland from England.
Back to 2009 and on this particular day, I had my trusted analogue Nikon camera with me loaded with a 400 ASA b/w film roll – that’s a ‘fast’ film suited for tricky lighting situations. I managed to get a seat in the second row and, joy of joys, I had a clear field of vision to the fencing piste some 10-20 metres in front of me where the top fencers on the planet were in action. Exhilarating stuff. But as a photographer I could tell the interior illumination was crap in the 1st degree, and I had been warned previously that camera flash was forbidden. Plus, I had another snag to contend with: a camera malfunction that had manifested itself that very day! For some bizarre reason I couldn’t get my camera to operate at anything but f8. In other words, I could only work my camera with this one aperture setting – jammed at bl**dy f8. And I so desperately wanted to grab a decent shot of the action on the piste. It was my first time at the World Championships in Fencing. What to do?
I took my life in my hands and decided to make a go of it. Severely restricted by the wretched ‘stuck’ aperture setting of f8, I set the shutter speed to varying lengths: a third of a second, half a second, one second, and even longer I think; all the time balancing my camera hand-held on the back of a vacant seat in front of me as I snapped away hoping I was catching something worthwhile as an image. Deep down, I knew I was winging it. But I had to try. Later on in the darkroom, I’m sure I ‘pushed’ the film to ensure it wasn’t underexposed. So, I got lucky. The result is what you see illustrated, and it was shown subsequently at a Royal Photographic Society exhibition in London in 2022.
Comments