Welcome to the inaugural edition of my periodical publication! Before we get to the pictures and the stories, I'd like to take a quick second to talk about what this publication is, and what it isn't.
It IS intended to be a series of essays focused on the art, science, and magic of photography. That means that we're going to explore a lot of things, some of which you might expect, and other which you might not. Topics include, but are not limited to:
- pictures I've taken, and the associated who/what/when/where/why's
- the aesthetics of photography and why I love it so much as an art
- an accessible look at the science, engineering, and history of imaging
- the philosophy of image making as both a science and art form
- and jokes. Lots of really bad jokes.
One point I want to drive home is that this is NOT intended to be a one-way communiqué. Though 99% of you won't respond (and that's ok), I'm looking to start conversations. I want to get your feedback, hear about what you liked and learned, what you disliked and disagreed with, and perhaps most importantly what you felt and identified with.
In this particular edition there's going to be a fair bit of exposition before we get to the photo, and it will get a little technical but I'll do my best to make it as simple and entertaining as possible. So after you read this, let me know how I did. Or if you gave up halfway through, I want to hear that too.
Or just don't say anything at all. It'll only break my heart.
Where to begin?
I spent a long time trying to decide where to begin this story. Starting in the present made sense, and it's hard to imagine a better beginning to a photographic adventure than where I am now.
I'm living in New York City, the photographic capital of the world, using my engineering education and photographic passion to work with the sharpest minds and most cutting-edge technology in the imaging industry. Through my work I've met world famous photographers such as Patrick Demarchelier and Albert Watson, gone behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, and tested millions of dollars worth of equipment, some in production and some unreleased, in just a little over a year.
But then I considered starting somewhere more personal — with my discovery of photography during my sophomore year at Duke, where I was studying biomedical engineering. It was the beginning of an unlikely love affair that began my drive to create images and share the narratives around them, and warped the path of my studies and career to steer towards biomedical imaging, and then scientific and industrial imaging at large.
In the end though, I figured the best approach would be to start at the very beginning of the story. After all, while some of you have known me since the moment I was born (hi mom), others among you may have only known me for a very short time, and I think that context is important.
So that's what we're going to do. Start from the very beginning.
Which, in this case, I've chosen to mean about two million years ago, when the first humans roamed the earth.
Yes, I'm dramatic. Deal with it.
Let there be light!
Roughly two million years ago, when our first bipedal ancestors rose up in Africa, there was only one reliable source of light on Earth — the sun. The moon doesn't count, because it's just reflecting sunlight, and the earliest evidence for human control of fire only dates back about a million years ago.
Now even if you're unfamiliar with how light works, you may know that it can be grouped into several different types. Visible light contains all the colors we see every day. UV light can uncover hidden details in crime scenes, or just give you sunburn at the beach. X-rays allow doctors to make critical decisions, and the TSA to see all the embarrassing things in our luggage. These are a few examples.
The sun puts out a good mix of light from most of the major types, and while some of it is visible, there are lots of interesting, invisible, esoteric kinds of light produced, too. However, most of these invisible types of light don't make it through the Earth's atmosphere.
This is fortunate because a lot of that light is very high in energy, and would basically flash-fry us. But our atmosphere protects us from the bad stuff, and the light that makes it to us on Earth is pretty safe, abundant, and has just enough energy for us to interact with.
So the first and most important imaging system in the history of the human species — our eyes — developed alongside the sun, as would the first photography systems — the camera obscura and silver nitrate film — millions of years later.
Since photography so often seeks to capture what we see, it's important to think about why we see. And I'll make a bold claim here — I think that vision is unequivocally the most critical of the senses to human communication, expression, and survival.
I can give you a few arguments to try and back up that claim so I'll start with this one — light is the best carrier of information in the universe.
And I can prove it to you.
The roof is on fire!
To demonstrate this, I'd like you get up and do a quick experiment. Just follow these quick steps:
- If your building is up to code, you'll have a fire alarm installed somewhere in your house. If you don't have one, please stop reading this and go buy one.
- Stand directly underneath the alarm.
- Get a measuring tape and mark a spot where you can stand exactly 10 feet away from your current position. Then go back to the spot under the alarm.
- Set your house on fire.
- Walk out to the spot you marked in step 3, and continue reading.
Done? Good.
Sorry about your house, but I'm trying to prove a point here.
A good fire alarm has some sort of visual signal (a flashing strobe, perhaps), and an audio cue as well (some sort of annoying siren that goes off every time you try and make a hot pocket). If you've done everything correctly and are standing at the right distance, here's what's probably happening right now.
First off, you smell smoke. While there are a lot of factors that go into how soon you smell it, a rough approximation puts the speed of smoke particles traveling towards you at about 3 meters per second. So your sense of smell detects the fire in about a second. Pretty quick.
That said, whether you know it or not, you actually heard the fire alarm before you could smell the fire. Sound travels through air at about 343 meters per second, so you'd hear the alarm in 8 milliseconds — around 125 times faster than you'd smell the smoke. Now THAT's fast. Take into account that sound travels even faster in hot air, and you could even cut that time down to 4 milliseconds if you're a skilled arsonist.
But that's NOTHING compared to how fast you saw the alarm light flash.
Light travels through air at nearly 300,000,000 meters per second, over 400,000 times faster than sound over a hot fire and almost 100 million times faster than the smoke. That means that the light from your fire alarm would reach you in about 10 nanoseconds.
And in general, the speed of light is the universal speed limit, so nothing else could have informed you that your house was on fire any faster. So while our senses of smell and hearing are often quick enough to help us avoid danger, when you can't afford to waste a (nano)second, vision provides us with our best chance of survival.
Take some time to think about just how neat that is while you're filing your fire insurance claim.
How does any of this relate to photography?
We're almost there, I promise. Believe it or not, all of this circles back together - the sun, ancient humans, the fact that light carries information so well, and photography.
There's just one final thing to discuss before we get to the art — we now know that light travels really fast, but what do I mean when I say that light carries information?
In a nutshell, it's just a complicated way of saying that when we sense light, it can tell us a lot about what's going on back where it came from. That can mean anything from showing us the expression on someone's face to providing evidence that gravitational waves exist, but the most important piece to consider right now is that it shows us color.
The ability to identify color has helped us avoid dangerous situations for millions of years. For example, it helped the first humans determine what berries or fruits might make them sick, and it helps modern humans determine which flavor of communal LaCroix might make their roommates angry.
I swear to god if one of these guys buys coconut again, I'm going to scream.
Sparkling water aside, when we look at today's photo, I want you to think about how incredible color is, and how different the image might look without it. It's precisely because so much information is available to us simply by looking at something that visual art can be so complex and compelling, and color is a huge part of understanding the practical and emotional components of an image. And so finally we've arrived at today's photograph.
Modern, ancient art
As we look at today's image, here's an exercise I would suggest, and I promise that this one doesn't involve burning down your house. Think of it as a sort of guided meditation.
First, close your eyes, take deep breaths, and take 30 seconds to clear your head of all this science nonsense I've been spouting. It's art time now.
Then, bring to mind some of the things we discussed — our first ancestors, the sun, the power of light, vision, color, and visual art.
Now take a look at the image below for 30 seconds or so. Think about it and see what emotions it evokes. Then read the passage below it and look at the photo again. Do they fit together? Does it change the way you think about it? I'm curious to hear personally.
Graffiti, unknown title and artist. Castle Hill, Austin TX.
"It takes the light two point eight million years to get here.
So we're looking at two point eight million years ago.
It might not be there. It could have died by now.
So who's going to see that?
It might not even be people by then. The sun's only eight minutes.
In the morning let's wait eight minutes and see if it's there now."
— STAR, from "Love and Information" by Caryl Churchill
This is a piece of graffiti I shot in 2017 in my hometown, Austin, Texas. I found it in a place called Castle Hill, an ever-changing outdoor graffiti park with dozens of beautiful, vivid art pieces varying wildly in size, color, and content. But what drew my attention most amongst the complex tags and massive photorealistic murals were two small, simple figures, tucked away in a corner of a crowded concrete canvas, looking not unlike a cave painting one of our ancient ancestors might have drawn.
The color drew me in as well, as red always does. Red is my favorite color because it has a comforting weight and finality to it. While traditionally a warning color, rare in nature, in the artistic world, it symbolizes to me the metaphorical boundaries of its subject, and has a uniquely intentional personality — where other colors might flippantly appear anywhere in a sequence, red is never there by accident. It shows us where things begin, or where they end.
With such a strong attraction to the piece, it was a foregone conclusion that I would use it to make an image of my own, and while the content of the image was already there, to me, framing was the key to transforming the drawing into a story. Isolating the figures from the surrounding clutter was an absolute necessity, but the use of negative space in the image was the most important element of the image in my mind, as it left a crucial void for the viewer's imagination to fill.
To me, the image presents the conclusion of a journey — a story of two companions arriving and sharing a sense of awe and wordless wonder in the face of something cosmic, unseen, and infinitely vast. Personally I fill the void with a glorious ancient sunset, or a breathtaking sea of stars. What do you see?
The "Love and Information" passage I included felt like a perfect way to conclude a discussion of light, information, the sun and cosmos, and the emotions visual art evokes. As an avant-garde play, it even feels structurally similar to the image - a brief vignette, captured and frozen in time amidst a collection of seemingly unrelated works and moments (you can explore more on this aspect of the play here).
I could go on and on, but I think I'll conclude here and listen to what you have to say. Send me a reply with your thoughts and feedback, or use the link at the bottom to provide feedback anonymously. I'm looking forward to seeing where this journey goes, and I hope you are too.
Much love,
Arnab