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 considerably 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 photography 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 of 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.
I started shooting nightfall under the illumination of a full moon in 1998 with a calf Creek picture below. After 911, I was motivated to once more create a book that relies on nighttime photography and the moonlight to make a book, because I now had a metaphor and a reason to go into the northeastern United States at night and shoot Falls. Somehow a certain tune by Mississippi Fred, McDowell continually crossed my mind. It’s his version of a blues classic that has the phrase, “Got me way down here by the rolling Forks.” McDowell had a signature style. He played slide with an animal bone, and was known for making his guitar sing, literally. Sound is central to the Falls, from trickles to floods. I recorded all of them, but, while interesting, and, unlike most image/sound marriages, the noise of the falls would become annoying. Unless it was the trickling brook sound. Those varying sound according water volume, don’t sing, but has similar mental effects. Low flow puts you in a state of peace, high flow is noisey, violent, unforgiving, mean and drama. Once more I was gonna go down with another book, but this time I was gonna go way down and I was gonna do it in the dark, yet to be illuminated slots. There was always only a short time slot as the moon swung across the sky to illuminate the ravines and canyons where waterfalls exist. This book was a failure, largely because of its challenges and not having any time left to accomplish Trying to combine too many coincidental events in a single night was too difficult. Waiting for big rain falls to produce large water drops, given the timing with the full moon, usually meant very long waits for the trifecta 90 minutes i needed. I did shoot trickling and tinkering falls with low water, but, they didn’t have the presence of the flow days of high rain.
The actual reason to quit this work, was not just being in my 70s, but in 2022 was diagnosed with the terminal shit-ass cancer.
Locations were Croton, Taughannock Falls (, Truman, Factory, Fulmer, Deer Leap, Dingman, Nelson’s Ledges, Black River, Brandywine, Tinker, Platteskil, 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, occurred, 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 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. 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 Triangle was gonna disappear by forced illegal displacement, something i had fought for ten years in art-fueled gentrification in my own neighborhood…but the waterfalls awaited. Besides the New York Falls would still exist until the next ice age. Humans have shorter deadlines.
The 9/11 Museum is an underground collection of ruins and momentos, that, in its lack of sugar-coating, and elevation of every day objects, charged with memory, i can relate. The inverted waterfalls at the Memorial, is a completely satisfying metaphor for when we watch the Towers fall like waterfalls, not from rain, but from planes – two of them.
VIEW the slideshow.
Check out more of the the Introduction and text here.
Night Falls is a certified Going Under project.