My first portfolio -- first ensemble of images -- after years of scattered efforts, "Black Ice" redoes a subject traditional to photography, cracks and bubbles in ice. The water in Lake Bungee, in woodsy Connecticut, lent itself to casting figures against black; always dark anyway (due to tannins in the leaves through which it filtered), it froze darker more than usual in the winter of 1989-90 before any snow fell. The cracks were also unusually pronounced, because the temperature, 2 F (-17 C) the morning after Thanksgiving, never rose above 20 F ( -7 C) before the new year, so the ice kept expanding, pushing against itself and the shores, new cracks forming in thunderous rumbles that traveled across the lake especially at coldest night. To take advantage, I used a film with a short tonal scale, Polaroid Type 55, exposing for highlights, letting the background fall into spatial black.
