Shadow Matter

Shadow matter

The shadow set in all day. I recall feeling as if night had stayed, light unchanging from dawn to dusk. It occurred one winter solstice, in a northern region; a storm system cast a deep inky blue hue over our terrestrial dwellings. I was in kindergarten, and I don’t remember details about the weather, whether it snowed or rained. What I remember is that I loved it, perplexed by the enormity of it. I wanted the big shadow to stay. I wanted to keep it still. Yet, all shadows are marks of impermanence. The next morning, tilting my head towards the window, news came that the earth was in motion as the sunrise flooded my room. Of course, I was unable to keep something so ephemeral, but the impression of its vividness, of peering out my window at its impossible navy beauty, lasts in exaggerated constancy. 

Light bathes, flickers, and rakes. Shadows blanket, dapple, and creep. ‘Shade’ is a way of knowing, as in, shading in the margins of a sketch. Shade is a type of shadowing, as in, where ferns prefer to grow. Sometimes shade is considered partial. Other times, it is night’s total darkness. It is best not to conflate a shadow with a reflection; they touch time in different tones. The thing that casts a shadow isn’t always the sun. Sometimes it’s a camera flash, fixing light into an image. The thing that makes a shadow isn’t always an object. Sometimes it's a thought, like a shadow within a cloud. Other times it’s a celestial orb intersecting the earth and the sun. I recall witnessing a lunar eclipse, the cows started to lie down, one by one, getting close to the ground as the moon’s shadow arrived. The birds perceived it approaching long before the cows did. Maybe they sensed the air cooling? Or maybe they saw the particular celestial shade far off on the horizon, their vantage point wider than ours. Quieting, they alighted to perch until the shadow passed. 

A passing shadow is a moment between this moment and —  

it's time to water the garden, time to attend to wilting blooms.

What is the quality of a shadow under the arctic sea as an iceberg floats by? How is it like, or unlike, a beach ball hovering over a river? I blink in uncertainty at the presence of such a sphere. At first glance, stillness renders the image quiet. Then it becomes numerous, continuing in rotation. It is a round thing after all, and round things tend to rotate, roll, revolve. Do the shadows of moon rocks have soft or sharp edges? Do they touch the edge of the infinite, like the shadows on your face? Moss is shadow made manifest, always north facing. A pond of opaque water, sunlight unable to penetrate the thick particles of red clay to the depths below: this shadow is murk —

It’s winter solstice again, now, as I write this. I live on a more southern line of latitude, and the shadows that appear are crisp violet and ochre. In the photographs gathered here, I elongate my imagination along with the shadows and light captured in each frame, whether soft or glaring, diffuse or momentary. These photographs draw me out of myself - out of my cells - extending my sight through the light that was sensed and seen by someone else, elsewhere. In these photographs there is a place to put shadows, to hold them on paper. The shadows stay still, stay hovering, stay passing; they stay with us even as light floods the surface of the page.