A Study in Scarlet

"'I must thank you for it all. I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.'"
-Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson, Sir Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

"I hear you got a job downtown,
man, it leaves your head cold.
Everywhere you look,
life ain't got no soul.
That apartment you live in feels like it's just a place to hide.
Walking down the street, you don't look no one eye to eye.
And the cops reported you as just another homicide.
I can tell that you was just frustrated
from living with
Murder, Incorporated."
-The Boss, Murder, Inc.



If I wanted to condense the DarkTopo philosophy into one sentence--which I don't--I would say something like this: A documentation of the way people navigate between absolutes, and a study of the landscape upon which they travel.



On election night I ran into Arratik, the former Asheville blogger and key member in the Scrutiny Hooligans. He'd seen my SLR vs. Rangefinder shoot-out, and commented on the books on my bookcase. He's the only one to comment so far--despite the thousands of hits that post has gotten--about the fact that I have Adolf Hitler's biography prominently displayed next to the Bible.

In fairness to myself, I'd like to point out that I also have Hawking's Brief History of Time and Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. So it's basically like a college humanities class, except without the pretentiousness.

There was a time when I wanted to read Mein Kampf, but then came the Patriot Act, and I didn't want to be flagged for checking it out of the library. If I'd known that I'd later launch a website called DeclareArms, I'd probably have just taken the heat. In any event, I settled for a borrowed copy of John Toland's Adolf Hitler.

My reason: Know your enemy.

We navigate between absolutes. That's one reason I love silver-based photography; it's so analogous to this idea. There is base plus fog, and Dmax, and all the zones in between, but you never get off the film. It's the same with digital, and any artistic medium with a dynamic range, but monochrome film photography stretches toward its absolutes much more gracefully than, say, quilting.

It's not a new thing, this idea of opposing absolutes. Right and wrong, light and dark. We've all heard them beaten to death by pundits and do-gooders, so much that they're permanently resident in our subconscious.

So why won't anyone call Anthony Sowell evil? I've heard disembodied ('scuze the phrase) voices on the radio saying he was "addicted to murder" and "had a disease." The stench still wafts from his house, according to the Times, and the scene is "grisly" and "macabre." But no one will say it. Similarly, Nidal Malik Hasan is "disturbed" or "sick," rather than "evil" or "insane." How can anyone look at pictures of people beating each other with rocks in Haiti, and still have doubts about human nature?

In the past week or so, I've posted pictures of rainbows, fog on the mountains, architecture in HDR, and a cute cat. The site has a new look that is decidedly less dark and moody. Some of the photos have "Buy me!" links beneath them. A friend of mine who wants to promote my work recently wrote and asked me for photos that are "energetic, vibrant, and non-representational."

My concern, readers, is that you'll think this is the harbinger of a new, radio-friendly DarkTopo. My New Years eve post might make you wonder if I'm aimless, or worse yet, aimed toward selling out. It's the old quote, often attributed to Henri Cartier-Bresson: "The world is going to hell, and Ansel Adams is shooting trees and rocks."

The fact is, I made a resolution. The morning after the Bard's colossal birthday party, I woke up and decided I would make five submissions a week for 2010. Galleries, magazines, whatever. Five cover letters, five burned CDs, five trips to the post office, uploads, emails.

This is no small effort. So I'm afraid what you'll hear from me, at least until I hit my stride on this thing, is re-run news of ideas that have already been sent off in packages with self-addressed, stamped envelopes. And I don't like it; I'd rather be updating my blog and writing about films and cameras and art, but there is a great contrast to deal with first. Some people can navigate between absolutes with an astounding grace . . .



. . . but I'm not one of them. So bear with me, y'all. And if you think things are getting a little cutsey around here, check that Conan Doyle quote and look at the new masthead.

Lately I've been accused of having something to prove. And that's exactly right. "So darlin, get it straight," the Boss says. "Keep pushing 'till it's understood."

With that in mind, here are the first real DarkTopo images of 2010.