Half of the Picture

I spent more than twenty-five years as a news photographer — deadlines, wire transmissions, thousands of frames that lived for a day. Somewhere in that run I stopped making prints. A few years ago I went back into the dark, and I have not really come out since.

Everything here begins on film and ends under an enlarger. I develop the negatives by hand, dodge and burn each sheet, and pull prints until one holds the tonal range the negative promised — deep blacks that still keep their detail, whites that hold texture rather than blowing out.

Every print is made on archival fiber-based paper, washed at length and selenium toned for permanence, so the print will outlast the person who bought it. No inkjet, no scans, no generated imagery.

The editions are deliberately small — twenty-five at the low end, five for the largest 4x5 prints. That is not scarcity for its own sake. It is the honest limit of what one pair of hands can print well in a session, and the point at which I would rather move on to the next negative.