Since the mid-1980s, a variety of mostly monochrome images have been accumulated in the form of photographic negatives and more recently in digital formats. Many are displayed in the photo and canvas gallery pages at this web site. A wet chemical darkroom for black & white development and printing as well as scanning and digital manipulation services are available on a case-by-case basis as requested for images that visitors would like to obtain for their own collections. (NAICS: 711510)
Information about availability of published volumes of photographic images recorded at this web site may be requested through the CONTACT US page.
Before visiting the gallery, consider the gray-scale rationale.
Over time, some color images will certainly creep into the Cylcoid Fathom collection. But why do we focus nearly exclusively on black and white? It’s not that we are purists. Color says a lot. It says it in its own language. The relationship of image components includes information about their relative hues. Sometimes this is crucial to the message and sometimes without it, not only what something means but even what something is is confused.
For us, however, color often says too much. It overwhelms the shapes of some objects. It removes the mystery in others. A quiet gradation of light moving softly over the smooth limb of a curved object can be shattered by red, green or blue in any but the sublest, most muted tones. A graphic quality is subordinated by color. Our rods lose to our cones in their battle for the right side of our brains. Their is a stark and provocative depth to black and white that can be cluttered by color.
Monochrome in photographic imagery is not analogous to a boring monotone in music. Rather it is like a single instrument that gets to play the full scale by itself – pure, no chords, and no rhythm section. As one’s eyes follow the light, a flute or bassoon follows the notes until in your mind’s eye and ear, an overall impression is synthesized, but only if the whole piece works.