A Frame Within a Frame

‘Saguaro Skeleton at South Mountain’ (1990s - ish)

Throwback photo alert!

I can remember the camera and the film that I used in the period when I took this photo of a saguaro skeleton at South Mountain Park* in Phoenix, Arizona in the blink of an eye… however I can’t quite nail down the year. It would have been somewhere in the late 90’s/ early 2000s when I was shooting heaps of Ilford Delta black & white 400 (ASA) film (then considered “high speed”) - so, so, so many rolls of Delta 35 and 120mm - and I can recognize prints from it anywhere ;).

I became a huge fan of Delta back in the film days because I loved its tonal range. When I used to make my own photographic prints at the Phoenix Center for the Arts’s community darkroom (3rd Street @ the 202 freeway) I got to a point of knowing my negatives so well that I enjoyed a straightforward workflow. Still all analogue, I knew the values of my processed film vis-à-vis the photo paper I used and the tray chemicals at play. This meant that I could spend time getting to know my co-conspirators AND I had the bandwidth to consider things such as composition and meaning in my work (note: it turns out that this can evolve massively! Ha! Will save for another blog post).

I appreciate that my rediscovered photo features a black framed window next to the ribs or “bones” of a dried saguaro, which I then put in a black “frame within a frame”. I think perhaps this choice is key to the image and makes it something like a timeless success.

Alongside ‘Saguaro Skeleton at South Mountain’, It’s been wonderful to be reminded of the many other scanned negatives that are - eeeeek, somewhere - and to recall beautiful, sun-filled glimpses of what feels a little bit like a past life.

Thanks for being here.

Hugs,

Laura

*Post Script: Such interesting tid-bits about South Mountain Park from Wikipedia:

South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona is the largest municipal park in the United States,[1] and one of the largest urban parks in North America and in the world. It has been designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride.[2]. Wow ! ! !