Reflection
Im very fond of the landscape of the western New York. White lived in Rochester when this picture was made, and the area south of the city is wonderful today. It would have been even better, then. There are any number of places where one can find a plot of land rising high enough to be illuminated by this low sun. While this is a specific setting, it it also indicative of the area. White would have seen this sort of thing often. Shoot, you can drive the Thruway and see countless places with this lighting. He was certainly familiar with the area.
For years, Ive driven between Michigan and New England, and Michigan and Colorado. In both cases, one transits an ocean: as different are the real topographies of New York and the Prairie, they represent to me the middle part of the journey. In either case, the characteristic sunlight is the most distinguishing element, and like the water in the sea, light becomes the element through which I travel.
Whites picture reminds me most of a scene I visited often in Colorado, a grain elevator between Ft. Collins and Sterling. During the day, with such a low horizon, high sun, and empty sky, there is a 2 dimensional feel to the place. The sensation of distance is somehow cancelled out, the viewer becomes the foreground, and everything else is the background. An occasional object rising from the Prairie floor seems to be painted onto the background. A similar, picturesque feeling can be perceived as one drives through New York.
At sunset or sunrise, however, the world changes. The blue sky blackens as it stands opposite the sun. Objects leap into the immediate foreground. They become monumental as the sun swings behind us.
Whites image holds all of this. The transiting sun is a temporary portal, briefly open. At a day's ends we can walk into this landscape.
White has jammed a chair into the portal.
Binding day and night, thinly distinct from either, Whites landscape leads us from the Transcendent to the Immanent. In this eternal moment, we can stand next to White and his camera and touch both worlds.
Did White use IR film for this ? Ill leave that for the historians. I dont think that it matters, the filtration effect is so intense upon the barns and sky. A relatively weak filter can have great effect with axial lighting. For technique, White often said only, the camera was faithfully used. Thats fine by me. He made an image that feeds my dreaming, and thats enough.
