Artful dodgers
I miss them terribly. I have a handful of them in a plastic bag on a darkroom shelf. Large and small circles of card, wrapped in black tape and stuck on coat hanger wire. Little masking tape handles. I even have a rectangular one. If you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, read here.
As much as I love using a camera, my first love is printing. I don’t do it anymore. My work has been expertly printed in platinum-palladium by Keith Taylor for the last several years, and I’m now putting together a book that is ink on paper. I’m very excited about this book, and there will be more on it later. But for now, I’m thinking about listening to loud music in der Dunkelkammer with a red box of Agfa Portriga and the size-focus-crop-expose-dodge-burn-dev-stop-fix-rinse-wash-tone-wash-tone-wash-dry. Magic.
Jack Wild, the actor who played the Artful Dodger in the 1968 film Oliver!, died a few years ago. I remember him best as Jimmy on the psychedelic Sid & Marty Krofft spectacle, H. R. Pufnstuf.