In Search of Poetry
I have often been asked why there are so few people in my images. The truth is there are people in most of my images, just not at the moment the shutter was fired. This is particularly evident in my current work, “In Search of Poetry.” The images allude to past events and people’s actions and lives lived. These are very narrative photographs and the style is an outgrowth of my photographs of in-animate objects that were at the center of my book The American Resting Place: 400 Years of American Cemeteries (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), as well as certain images from my book Colonial Noir (Stanford University Press, 2004). This new work, though using some of the same techniques, has a feel that is quite whimsical, and a bit mysterious. In the images Lounge Chairs or Mailbox or Drive-In, the stories are alluded to. Who sat in these chairs sipping iced tea? Or who were the people who waited by that old mailbox for letters from loved ones in pre-email days?
Several of the images such as Through the Door or Mirror Pond take on a different mysterious air. They are allegorical in nature and it is the viewer who must bring his own imagination into play.
To accomplish the mood required, I have experimented with a number of vintage lenses either mounted on a 4x5 (though shooting 120mm film) or in 120 foldouts (6x9 images). The subtle tonality and bokeh (out-of-focus areas and transitions from the in-focus area) create a mood that helps with the narrative and has a very different feel than modern digital lenses that are more optimized for color correction and edge-to-edge sharpness. Toned silver fiber prints also add to this sense of the past, and I am using some of the last stock of a very nice silver paper that has been discontinued as well as a very high quality specialty paper imported from France.
— Reid Yalom
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