First Photograph of a Snowflake by William ReichardWilson Alwyn Bentley, Circa 1910 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Their chief property: impermanence. What one discovers must be quickly preserved. The chief challenges: scale and speed. How to capture a single flake, magnify it hundreds of times, be certain that the intact image is burned onto the large glass negative, all accomplished in the dark of the blackout hood. The primary goal: to create an image clean and clear, free of motion when, by nature, the flake is only motion. He tries it hundreds of times, the microscope, the camera, the hot keg lights blasting hard. Finally, the contradictions hold and the ephemeral is captured. When he makes a positive and drops the paper into the developer, he watches as winter itself emerges, intricate and perfect. William Reichard is the author of five poetry collections, most recently, Two Men Rowing Madly Toward Infinity (Broadstone Books, 2016). He is the editor of American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice (New Village Press, 2011) an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays addressing social justice issues. He lives in Saint Paul, MN.
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