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A perfect photographic image is produced when a particular shutter speed is used in combination with the correct aperture or vice versa. There is latitude in the technical and creative process that allows for choosing a different shutter speed and compensating for the difference with another aperture whereby the new combination creates a reciprocal correct exposure. However there comes a point at which the law of reciprocity fails, where film no longer records an image “correctly” due to either relatively short or long exposures.
The world is overflowing with banal, boring perfectly exposed photographs. Sometimes, due to human error or technical problems, the process breaks down and beautiful imperfections are created.
I took this “image” on a day when not only did I experience a failure in the law of reciprocity on the film in my camera, but also in the relationship I had with the person I loved. A relationship is a balancing act that requires appropriate doses of varying factors that demand reciprocal adjustment to succeed. Too little or too much of a particular element can be injurious. Repeated too often it can be fatal.
We were in Paris. It was snowing. It was very cold outside. We had been bickering, about everything it seems, but we were still in good humor. Bickering had sadly become routine, but something was about to break. I asked for something I thought was little, and I got the opposite. The reciprocity was out of whack, and I was angry and hurt. But as usual I continued shooting, as photography has been the only relationship in my life that had seen pain but never caused it. I don’t know for sure if my pain caused the wrong settings on the camera, but evidently the film did not receive adequate exposure.
On one frame dusk and brutal cold, on the next the warmth of incandescent light but an uncertain future. Exactly one year later and yet one more reciprocity failure I ended the relationship.
Paris, France 05 January 2003
Written in Portland Oregon, December 8, 2006
