かめ工房 モノクロ写真館

Japanese

sensitive monochrome

I began the monochrome photography, when I was a high school student. At the photography club of my high school, they used to do monochrome photography because it was less expensive. Although I was not really interested in monochrome photography to begin with, I became unexpectedly addicted. The beautiful tones that appears can often convey more than a color photograph.

There were ways of manipulating photographs that ara only possible in a darkroom. For instance, when two negatives are overlapped, two nomal photographs of a cat and a cherry tree changed to a wonderful fantasy by the accidental idea. I was able to get various ideas, when I understood the very simple and intelligible principle of developing photograph “The place exposed becomes black. For example, a piece of paper-cutting art, a shadow of wild grasses. Putting something like glass, which lets light pass, on a photographic paper. One day, light was accidentally turned on before I put the printing paper in a fixing solution, and it became a negative picture. Later, I got the name of this technique — solarization.

Some masterpieces have been born by using such trial and error. Recently, I could reproduce such a work very easily by the introduction of computers. I feel that something is missing. However, I can take neither time nor place for the analog technique these days. The new technique gave me the the other opportunity to face old pleasure which has been away from me for a while. Maybe this will be the way going back there or a new entrance. I want to return to a darkroom some day.