When
Light Turns to Dust
We
have lived in the same house for nearly 30 years, but it was
only during the summer of 2002-3, that I discovered a series
of old negatives had been left on the ground in the cellar
by a previous owner. My shock discovery led to an instant eagerness to bring them
into the light and view the mysterious images, discover something
of the previous owner and the people and places that might
be in the images. I figured that these abandoned negatives
should hold the residue of a previous light encounter embedded
onto the surface, should retain a history of light locked
away in silver, that they would reveal moments from a Bartesian
death to the discoverer. But
my expectations were shattered; the ravages of time had taken
its toll on the images. Virtually all the silver embedded
gelatin had been eaten away leaving only the faintest of traces.
The memory of the people, events and places that were once
held on the negatives had effectively been eroded through
time until nothing recognizable was left. Yet, despite this
complete dissolving of memory, there was a stunning image
on each negative. The reference to light had been replaced
with decades of dust, dirt and clay fragments which had replaced
the silver with its own intricate, abstracts patterns. I was
holding a new artifact, the evidence of light transcending
to dust.Lloyd
Godman
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