For All His Crying

Two trunks stand close in near-darkness, their bark shredded into long fibrous strips that catch what little light reaches them. The trunk at left reads as a flat vertical plane, its peeling ribbons hanging in parallel descent, pale where the light grazes and lost to shadow at the margins. The trunk at right turns toward the camera as a sculptural mass, bark lifting away in curved tongues and torn sheets, a thin rim of light tracing its right contour while the inner folds recede into black. Between the two opens a deep void that holds most of the frame, leaving the eye only those lit edges to follow. The tonal palette is nearly monochromatic, a warm brown sinking toward black, and the dark closes in hard from every corner. Shot in available light. Printed on fine art paper with archival pigment inks. No compositing. The appeal was renewed at every sitting; the bench rose unmoved.