Foreword to Alex Heffernan’s book, Back to the Salt
2019
A red light in a dark room
In a darkroom, the red light is the safe light. Black and white photography relies on silver halides, these little glowing shards embedded into fibrous paper. Due to their sensitivity, they darken upon contact with light, and a magical alchemical process, wet and hazardous and fraught, turns water into wine, salt into metal. But the red light is the safe light. The red light doesn't metamorphose the halides in the same way. They're not impervious, but the process is slowed. The spectrum of red light and the silver on the paper, the relationship is a protective one. A conduit for calling forth.
A safe light in a red room.
Retreat is a sympathetic reaction to trauma. The precarity of living in the 21st century, with vast inequalities on both a micro and macro level stacking upon mounting ecological crises and oncoming mass extinction at unavoidable, unthinkable scale, leaves huge numbers of us looking for some kind of retreat. The photographs, the illustrations, the text - poetic, symbiotic - speak of retreat in times of uncertainty. This retreat recurs throughout the book. Retreat to the warmth of familial bonds. Retreat to the forests of childhood. Retreat to imaginary places, both here and Over There. Retreat to the darkroom, retreat to the red light. The light diffused by the thin skin of your eyelids, the taut belly and blood of your mother, the protective magic of the dark room. Back to the salt.
A dark light in a safe room
In both images and text, of course, there is death. There are many thinkers, much smarter than me, who have written countless words on how photography and death are inextricable. There is decay in the image of the prone bison, in the rot of the tree stumps. In the written desire for annihilation, for living a life backwards. Look closer, though, and everything teems with vibrant life. There are endings, but beginnings, cyclical returnings. In the penultimate poem in the collection, the final line states "I am composed with hopeful fear". This is a book composed with hopeful fear, in the haze of a red light. Retreat, and move forward.