About Latent Images...

The title itself is a mixture of philosophy and flippancy. For me, the phrase "latent images" is part word-play, part old joke, and part philosophy and dreaming. Literally, a "latent image" would be an image which is hidden, lurking, dormant. Or which is "lying hidden and undeveloped within a person or thing"--something which exists but in an undeveloped state. But "latent image" is a photography term for, basically, undeveloped images on exposed film. In college they told us about an old hazing trick they used to play on newbies--they'd send them out to buy "latent image viewers" as part of their equipment list. "That way you can look to see if the film is worth developing or not, or if you need to process differently to compensate for incorrect exposure." Imp that I am, I still get a giggle out of thinking of those kids rushing off to get an impossible piece of equipment. Latent images cannot be viewed.

The philosophy and dreaming comes in when I let my mind play a bit with the phrase, thinking of the seeds of creation in us and in our subconscious minds--images which perhaps in some way exist but are invisible or dormant for a time before they are ready to be created in visible form. As if time and imagination and soul could somehow be thought of as all existing together in one big piece of fabric containing past, present, and future. Perhaps "embryonic" would be a better word than "latent," but "embryonic" makes me think only of beginnings, rather than potential. And I'm just fond of the phrase, "latent images". Whatever captures your imagination, you know? So the play on words is that this gallery is for images which come from within me--whether from dreams or my subconscious or just from some potential inside of me...images which once were latent. And the joke is that this is my latent image viewer--now you can see them...but only because this is their future and they're no longer latent. They've had time to develop.

So these aren't latent images.

I named this gallery thinking of images which have had their roots deep inside me for a long time before I created them--whether it be because they are self-portraits and my self has been brewing for awhile now, or because dream fragments and ideas percolated for a long time before combining to form an image which just seemed to pop up out of nowhere to hold those fragments. Part philosophy, celebrating that subconscious creative urge which forms so many of my images; part wise-ass joke. And some waking dreams, dredged up from my subconscious with the aid of a camera. I think a lot of the images in here are not "waking dreams," but only pretty pictures, something beautiful found and captured, or something honest noticed and recorded. Only time will tell me which ones might hold messages from my subconscious, things I'll notice and appreciate only after time. Some of these images are things from the past which I have scanned (so much of my past work isn't scanned yet) and many of these photographs are images I've taken recently with my digital camera.


A few practical notes....

I find myself uncomfortable talking about "subconscious messages" to anyone else, so I think I'll just say very surface sorts of things about them in here--let them speak with their own voices. Perhaps someday that will change, but for now the ones which do "speak" to me say very personal things, and things which I'm still puzzling out.

Some of the images in here are linked to larger versions, others I currently only have small versions of. Run your mouse over the images you'd like to see larger to see if there's a link available.

You'll find that many of the images in here come from another project of mine, Untitled. I thought it would be interesting to pick out a few of my favorites each month and see what I end up with. So you'll find some things duplicated here.

Some of the gallery pages have not yet been built--I've been putting this together piece by piece and have not had as much time for working on it as I'd like. There will be a lot of changes going on in here for awhile yet. If you see something which ought to have a link, but doesn't, just ignore it (and mutter under your breath at me). I'm not even sure about all the things I do and don't want to include in here yet.

Just consider this gallery...under development.