The work of waterfalls illuminated by full moons began in 1998, when I photographed Calf Creek Falls in Utah under a full moon with Ektar 25 film in a 90 minute time exposure, deciding that, although it’s bounced sunlight, it didn’t look that way, and the light source would move considreably during the shot. It’s easy today with digital, that’s why no one did so much moon shooting before with film, especially color film with its colir shifts as exposures get longer. Confirming this, after printing samples, after shooting for years with out printing, even proofs, i confirmed ultra-long moonlit exposures were different enough to continue this process for almost every moon cycle until 2006, after beginning in the 1980s with Ektar 25 film, the most highly resolved negative film ever made.
The challenge, like so much photgraphy was time and place, but here, greatly exaggerated by attempting to bring together fall color, high water and limited illumination, since the falls, situated in slots, coolies, ravines and canyons, were only briefly lit by the passing moon. Generally speaking, if streams flowed, more or less, north to south this was possible, further limiting things.
All in all, i rate it as a failure, as it would have taken a life time to get it done. It was also fairly brutal, especially shooting in the dead io winter in the middle of the night, often using crampons to maneuver over the ice and snow, while moving into position, in night hikes to the falls that could be over miles in length.
Locations were Croton, Taughannock, Truman, Factory, Fulmer, Deer Leap, Dingman, Nelson’s Ledges, Black River, Brandywine, Tinker, Plattekil, Kaaterskil, Bastion and Rickets Glen, which kept me busy enough in a struggle that was a falls too far, and a photographer that had gotten too old and injured.
I got interested in waterfalls lit by a full moon, but the project would only begin in earnest, much later, 3 weeks after 9/11, and the towers falling, on the next full moon in October of 2001. Somehow this became a tribute to that event and I proceeded for the next 21 years, when I got a chance, to get out for a full moon excursion into waterfall country,which, for this project, occured, primarily, in my home state of New York and the beautiful neighboring state of Pennsylvania. I mentioned, “when I could” which is a mild reference to the nine years I was shut down with regards to my free will to shoot. Taking care of family for so long, that, while devastating, I don’t complain about it. However, the years I fought being displaced, with, of course, it, ending in being forced out, giving in and losing the war, and forced to move out of my legal home-for-life. Losing so much at the same time – family, friends, having to start all over at the age of sixty, including a move to the Bronx, out of Brooklyn, stunted the Falls project, but true to form, I began to shoot again in April, 2012, but had to sacrifice 2013, because Willet’s Point was being gentrified and 23 acres of shops was disappearing. The Iron Trinagle was gonna disappear by forced illegal displacement, something i had fought for ten years in art-fueled gentrification in my own neighborhood…
The 9/11 Museum is closed, an underground collection of ruins and momentos, that, i wonder, in its lack of sugar-coating, and elevation of every day objects, charged with memory, how could it last? What will last are the inverted waterfalls, which, this book prefigured, as a fitting metaphor.
VIEW the slideshow.
Check out more of the the Introduction and text here.
Night Falls is a certified Going Under project.
