LENGTHENING SHADOWS BEFORE NIGHTFALL by Dugdale, John - 1995

Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Pblishers, 1995. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine / Very Good. Folio, 12.3 n., x 9.2 in. Unpaginated. Illustrated with full page cyanotype photographs. LImited edition of 4000 copies. Faint sticker scar and scratches to base of dustjacket back; ISBN sticker to back flap of dustjacket. Internationally renowned photographer John Dugdale creates poignant and stirringly intimate imagery using 19th century photographic processes and a 19th century aesthetic. At the age of 33, Dugdale had a transformative experience of nearly total blindness due to a stroke and CMV retinitis, an HIV-related illness. Completely blind in his right eye, Dugdale found himself seeing with less than twenty percent visibility in his left eye. While blindness ended his successful commercial photography career, he found himself free to explore his fine art, using friends and family members as studio assistants. He unconventionally works with some of photography's first techniques from the 19th century by employing large format cameras, creating cyanotype prints, platinum prints, and using the albumen process which dominated photography from the 1850s to the 1880s. His 19th century sensibility emphasizes the poetics of his work and the transcendence of time and place, seemingly transporting the viewer to a different era. The stirring and poignant imagery is largely composed from memory and as Dugdale himself says, "The mind is the essence of your sight. It's really the mind that sees." (from Holden Luntz Gallery).