![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/SEPTA_69th_St_Upper_Darby_PA_1980\u00a9Brian_Solomon_610184.jpg\")
<\/a><\/a><\/a>My visual inspiration came from slide shows with family friend (and now regular Tracking the Light reader) Emile Tobenfeld, who specialized in innovative and creative urban abstract images. Other inspiration included Donald Duke\u2019s book Night Train (published in 1961), and various main-stream media, including the film 2001<\/em>.<\/p>\n By intent, I made color slides that were dark and minimalistic. These are raw images made by a kid with a Leica who could see, but who had very little technical prowess. They were intended for projection in dark room.<\/p>\n Although my vision continued to embrace some of the same compositional threads that I\u2019d worked with in my earlier years, by the mid-1980s I rejected these early efforts because they were raw and unrefined. Today, I find them fascinating.<\/p>\n A couple of weeks ago five cartons of slides were discovered in a closet. These contained photos I exposed in the 1970s and early 1980s that I\u2019d later rejected as \u2018unsuitable for presentation.\u2019 Sometimes the \u2018rejects\u2019 prove more interesting than the \u2018keepers\u2019. When I was a teenager, I had a different vision than I did … Continue reading Lost Archives: DARK, RAW, and Minimal.<\/span> <\/a><\/a> <\/a>Later when I learned more about photography, I was discouraged from this sort of raw minimalism. Instead I was urged to photograph to capture greater detail, where sharpness was prized among other qualities. My photography adopted qualities that were \u2018better suited for publication and commercial application\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>TRACKING THE LIGHT POSTS EVERY DAY.<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"