The Latent Image
In the early days of photography, the nature of the invisible change in the silver halide crystals of the film's emulsion coating was unknown, so the image was said to be "latent" until the film was treated with photographic developer.
—Wikipedia
1. Grand Canyon Triptych
a. Miles of rock and sky
to capture. A caravan
of photographers scales
Grand Canyon trails
with a mobile darkroom.
Horses carry on their backs
cameras, plates,
and musical instruments
turned sinks and tanks,
containers of
liquids. These mountain
roads have no rails;
the animals’ burdens shift
over the protrusions.
The weight is too
much to hold:
a horse falls over
a cliff. Camera breaks.
A silver bath
rains over everything.
Glass breaks on
the rocks. Imagine—
the dead animal
broken in the gorge,
covered with splinters
and dust. The image
at first lies invisible
on the plate.
Silver salts climb
chemical lattice works;
helices of metals and liquids
converge through exposure
to light. Chlorine mist
attaches to silver crystals,
proves the permanence
of the wreckage.
The finished plate
is too delicate
to touch. Blood and bone
on a cliff’s edge.
b. On a mountainside,
a worker attaches
telephone wire to
a post. An invisible
hand readies to pull
the silhouette,
holding onto a length
of string, from the outcrop
on which it stands.
What appears to be
a giant’s shadow
covers the opposite flank.
A dry river runs
between the giant
and man holding string.
They face each other
and have no faces.
In color, and with
moisture in the air,
a rainbowed halo called glory
would form around
the worker’s shadow
and project over the sun.
Calls will come through
the wires; dust and cable
carry our messages
over the trails.
Trail, incidentally,
can also mean shadow—
our face, its face.
c. Tourists watch the sun set.
A man climbed
to the peak of one outcrop
to take pictures.
The mountains were not
tinted violet. The sunset
was never in the picture.
The man jumped
to the next outcrop.
Wearing sandals no less.
It happened so
fast I could not see.
A camera and tripod
over his left shoulder.
Only his right hand
to clutch the rock.
His name remains
unknown. The face
was not visible.
The truth is
the image can lie
invisible for decades.
Everything depends on
molecules of vapor.
A ledge—
just out of shot.
2. Mathew Brady Reflects on a Daguerreotype from President Jackson’s Last Year of Life
To make a daguerreotype, a silver surface must be mirror-polished.
The resulting image is negative, but the surface reflects the image
to appear positive. The portrait will have no duplicates.
Therefore, a government should preserve its dead. After years
of living history, a face becomes a landscape of ghosts. The end of a life carries weight and line.
Not only the face, but also the surface— time’s mistakes.
As if generating from the face itself. As if they alone constitute the face— some fingerprints and some fog— they conquer it.
A fortune rests in preserving lines, lost eyes and names. A man poses for preservation. Dignity may fail in the lines.
3. After Louis Daguerre’s “Boulevard du Temple,” 1832
A city apparently abandoned
but for a single man whose boots
are being polished—the first depiction
of human presence in a photograph
whose city street, closed off
by a neat line of trees,
rushes headlong
toward us—the composition alone
indicating movement—
but what we cannot see
is the motion—too fast
for early cameras, taking
too much time to expose—
carriages driving down the street
that, no doubt like some shopkeepers
who are hurrying beneath
the buildings’ awnings back to work,
and ladies carrying parasols—
having waited too long
on a sunny day—who are dashing
to buy that evening’s dinner bread and wine,
and another man—caught up
in the music of a distant street performer—
who dances vigorously in front of
his window—all become lost subjects
in the photographer’s rush to capture
common time—and the single figure—
faceless and blurred—
poses with one foot raised,
still as polished marble
during a busy day
on a Paris boulevard.
4. Kirlian Photography
A fingerprint shines blue light
from each swirl’s perimeter.
A leaf, even after it is torn,
will generate fluorescence
from the severed section. According
to Kirlian this is the object’s life source—
intrinsic energy the objects leave
on the photographic plate.
But a coin too gives light—residue
of its owner’s perspiration,
which in turn makes the metal
more conductive. Or perhaps, a remnant
of the owner’s skin. Perhaps even
energy from Jefferson’s face
on the nickel. The body becomes an image
by crafting the shadow in light.
Newer photographies detect light
around their subjects through sensors
like those on a polygraph machine.
Movements pulse under the skin
and manifest the rhythms as different colors
of light. Each photograph’s aura
dependent on the moment it is taken.
Tonight, in the museum garden, for example,
ghost tourists take pictures, the darkness
sparking like a lightning storm.
With proper flash and shutter speed,
the camera may reveal dust motes through
lamplight, wisps of vapor,
possible phantoms.
5. Radiography
Hummingbirds shape smoke trails in the sky.
Beneath the ribs the heart remains whole,
and wasps have constructed paper cities there.
If we look inside the cranium,
we find a mapmaker’s dream, gyri
become river systems. Networks
of tubes emerge onto the other side of the world.
Gondoliers row through the canals;
swarms of cabbage moths color the banks.
Originally, the X-ray technician
was called a skiagrapher. Shadow writer.
Scientists who studied these rays
often died from exposure. Unlike sunburn,
radiation burns continue to expand outward
even after contact has ended, enveloping
larger sections of skin. Beneath the eyes,
a lighthouse beam: when we face,
the world radiates primary color.
6. Autochrome of a Mongolian Prisoner in a Box
Mesmerised by the shockingly colourful images presented that evening, Kahn saw in the Lumierès' invention a means of creating “a photographic inventory of the planet as it is inhabited and managed by humanity at the beginning of the 20th century.”
—Benjamin Secher, Telegraph UK
An arm emerges.
A hole in the side.
Shadows [ ] hair.
Grasping a lock.
Color from tinted grains.
72,000 photographs—one of
[ ] is mostly our view.
About entrapment.
If we look closely.
of the face visible.
Microscopic potato starch. Definition from lampblack.
Endless steppes—
livestock, perhaps, in the distance.
Can be viewed through handheld projector.
Spots of red, blue, and green where they should not.
Image on a mirror ground glass.
[ ] the key.
7. Passing
A circle forms around the body—
a hundred flashes.
The deceased’s picture:
cold and stiff, hair and face carefully
made up, one final memento
before cremation. This moment in stillness,
produced by pushing a button,
is easily erased or transferred
then printed on sheets of paper
or sent to the family.
When the telephone captures the body
in the twenty-first century parlor
of the dead, there is room for error:
no necessary passage through chemical baths
before shape sets. A face
of someone we do not remember.
Gone. We keep the smiling child,
not the crying one.
The photographer renders
the body in rest, solely
mediates its passage
between this world and the next.
