Work · Ovenden Scar

Chalk, After Rain

2024 · 18 sheets exposed · 2 prints kept

Chalk is only worth photographing when it is wet. Dry, it is a flat grey wall that flattens further under an overcast sky. An hour after rain the flint bands go black, the fissures hold water, and the face separates into the twenty tones it actually has.

Frontal, always. The moment the camera tilts, the face becomes a picture of a cliff rather than a picture of a surface.

A wet chalk cliff face filling the frame, dark flint bands and shadowed fissures cutting across bright chalk. — Face, an hour after rain Ovenden Scar March 2024 neg. 4×5 fibre base, grade 2 toner selenium 1:20, 6 min mean chroma 5.13

A close upright frame of a horizontal flint band in chalk, the nodules almost black against white. — Flint band, seven metres up Ovenden Scar March 2024 neg. 4×5 fibre base, grade 2½ toner selenium 1:20, 6 min mean chroma 2.95

The prints in this series

Both were toned in the same bath at 1:20 for six minutes and measure a mean chroma of 5.13 and 2.95. The difference between those two figures is the difference between the two photographs, not between two treatments: a print with more shadow in it takes more selenium, because there is more silver in it to convert.

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