The Way the Light, Vol. 1: Metallurgy

Welcome to Volume 1 of The Way the Light. This series is image-heavy/text-light. It's a way to showcase what catches my eye and what my brain reactively classifies as beauty. My interest in metal objects and design came as a very young child the first time I found a key on the ground. I'm sure it was either a house key or a car key. I picked it up and, without a second thought, put it in my pocket. As I went about playing with other kids and walking around my neighborhood, I found more, so I started a collection.

The images on these pages might at first appear still, solid, and quiet. Please look closer, because this is not always the case. There is movement in the repeating line, in a shadow that points elsewhere (maybe even off the page), and in a sudden burst of color. I chose Metallurgy as the first book in the series because of the material's reflectivity in both senses of the word: it borrows the light from whatever is shining on it and reflects that light back while also giving the observer a way to review that which is reflected but in another form, i.e., its inverse, its opposite, and its reinterpretation.

This particular collection illustrates what I love about metal as a unique material, whether bronze, iron, brass, steel, pewter, tin, or aluminum. Here, I feature it as we find it in our everyday lives: hasps and hinges, locks and keys, stairs and ladders, tools and gauges, and much more. I include water towers as well. The alien-like structures you still see in many small towns throughout the US have an eerie way of hovering over us as they remain in the backdrop of daily life.

A note about the title of the series. It spun off from artist Edward Hopper's famous quote: All I ever wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house. In these books, The Way the Light... is a prompt for me as a writer and a photographer. I am deeply inspired to show, through my photography, the way the light:

Bends around corners

Seeps into a space
Silhouettes and outlines
Stabs the sky
Hits the side of a building
Catches a detail
Makes a smudge
Leaves a trail

I hope you enjoy looking at these images as much as I have enjoyed finding, capturing, and presenting them grouped together in this book.