NORTHERN FLORIDA COLOR AND LIGHT
There's a certain quality of light here in North Florida I've never seen anywhere else. In the late afternoon during winter, fall, and spring, it turns a pure transparent gold. Saturated in that light, the colors of ordinary objects and of the natural world emerge as if color had just been invented. In that certain slant of light, even the peeling paint on an old abandoned building seems portentous, as if it is just on the point of some mysterious transformation. Everything--a quiet family beach, the the lacy woodwork of an old-style Florida house, a tin roof shining in the afternoon sun, an old-fashioned commercial building in a town you may never have heard of, or the peeling paint of a disused building, seems to glow with significance. Suffused in that mysterious radiance, everything looks evocative and valuable.
But even the occasional grey winter's day or a stormy afternoon has a certain muted beauty. Objects merge in and emerge from the mist. That light is silver rather than gold; in it colors are greyed down, subdued. It's a secretive, subtle ambiance. It gives everything a strange, bygone feeling, like an old daguerreotype.
These photographs were ones taken by me and my late husband during the period between 1996 and 2000. Most were taken in 1997. We were both entranced, during a certain period of our lives, with the fall of the light on ordinary objects. We used to drive from town to town all across North Florida---from the Space Coast across the north Florida inland towns to the Nature Coast. It was strictly a hobby, pursued for our own edification.
Photography, even amateur photography, makes you pay more attention to how the light falls. Photographs, even ones as crude as these, help you to remember how it looked as it fell. I'm grateful that for the time I spent learning to see my part of the world.
We weren't fussy about our subjects----we photographed anything that seemed to be giving back the light or the color in a way that called attention to itself. Water shining on marsh grass, the sun reflecting off the tin doors of an old warehouse or the tin roof of a house deep in the woods, an orange tree, a lifeguard shining in the afternoon sun, on a small family beach on the northwest coast, a display of ceramic fish in the window of a shell shop, the ocean at dawn, a brightly painted hamburger stand, a baby alligator among the leaves, the wooden ramp leading across the water into the woods...all of it was fair game.
We took the pictures because we'd seen those things and we wanted to remember seeing them. Memory isn't sufficient---a white church against a blue sky; so what? Our photographs, however crude, reminded us that the front of the church literally blazed with the reflected light and that the blue sky was really almost indigo it was so deep. They reminded us that the grass outside an old abandoned house was so saturated with the sunlight pouring out of the west that it had literally turned yellow and that the in the late afternoon before sunset, the glass towers along the Jacksonville landing first turn a blindingly brilliant silver and then a very soft luminous gold. They reminded us that when the sun filters through the liveoak trees or on the leaves of a palm tree, it's reflected in each leaf as if each were a mirror, so that at certain times of the day the whole landscape glitters. They reminded us that on the west coast at sunset and on the east coast at dawn, the rocks along the shores look as if they'd been painted yellow. They reminded us that the ocean at dawn at St. Augustine Beach is really midnight blue, streaked with gold, and that even ordinary things give back the Florida sun in extraordinary ways.
Whenever I took a photograph, I took it saying to myself, 'Get it now before it's all gone.' The light goes out of things very quickly here.
The theme, if there is one, is (to quote a line from Muriel Spark) 'the transfiguration of the commonplace.' 'It's an old warehouse,' said one of my friends. 'So what?'
Another friend tactfully pointed out some of the jpeg artifacts and other defects that I'd tweaked into some of them. I am not gifted in the graphic arts, but I still think these photographs say something about Northern Florida. Despite many artistic and technical defects, some of them might give you an idea of how light falling at just the right angle on a corrugated tin shack can reveal the whole spectrum just as effectively as the finest crystal prism.
Most of these photographs were taken between 1996 and 1999; one or two may have been taken later.
I've organized them according to whether they were taken on the west coast (known here as the 'Nature Coast'), the east coast (the 'Space Coast') or in one of the Northern Florida inland cities or towns. I've not attempted to identify specific towns---in some cases I wasn't sure at the time and in others I no longer remember. In any case, it doesn't matter, since for us it wasn't the place or the thing so much as the color and light. As this isn't a tourist brochure or an advertisement, I didn't think it would matter. If you click on the links below, they will take you to the respective 'galleries.' Once there you can dip in as you wish or simply dive in and navigate through the photographs in consecutive order.
Since I'm a mere amateur, it may seem pretentious to say COPYRIGHT DAMOZEL 2005. Even so. Please don't copy or make any use these photographs other without written permission. (Since I'm not a professional or an artist, the work isn't for sale.)
If you have questions about any of the photographs, feel free to email---though if it's to ask where something was taken, there's a good chance I won't remember.
And the site is of course in loving memory of Don (who took all of the best pictures and who always wanted to share them).
Thanks for looking! |
