Batsceba Hardy/Robert Bannister/ Micheal Kennedy/ Fabio Balestra

Shadows

"The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say." Gregory Maguire

It is true that the shadows have more to say and speak louder at different times. They have been used to great effect in cinematography, to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, as your mind runs wild with mortal thoughts and fears.

We wanted you to embellish your stories with those shadows, to set the viewers mind alight, leaving us in a dream evoked by your making; that was the challenge.

It was tough, especially for those who live in light-challenged areas. The response was amazing and we hope again, it will add to your armory of Image dramatics, to keep the viewers locked to your portfolio.

Thank you everyone for taking part, and enjoy the submissions that we feel were the best of the best.

Robert Bannister

Is a Shadow a Shadow a Shadow?

Every time I think of shadows, I remember Peter Pan losing his. I read the book at age nine, and saw the Disney film many years later.

I don't know if Disney's Peter Pan ballet with his Shadow is just a delightful double-step of animation, or prefigures of the eternal child who does not want to grow into narcissistic solipsism.

Not for nothing The Shadow by Carl Gustav Jung is the recess in which all sink their roots, a dangerous double, atavistic.

But the Photographic Shadow of People and Things is something more cheerful and comforting: we see the world as another watermark, absurdly lengthened or shortened, swelling or thin as a tower that will be erased in an instant, with the displacement of our axis, of our look.

Borges' Praise of Shadow is a colorful overview of a great observer, photographer of leitmotiv of literature and photography.

In the same way a good photographer walks a sunny day, skirting the fence of the park, and knows how to impress the blackest rituals of the shadows left by the rest on the diaphragm, starting with the gate, two passers-by, a tall tower, a tight tree.

The photographer does not have that fear that he could have if instead, he moved on to a set, and the shadow became the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock, the figure behind the shower curtain before the scream.

One of the most sensitive film critics recalled that the great directors of German Expressionism, as soon as they filled the set of objects, announced a threat: but this Shadow of Expressionism has stretched all over cinema and photography, every time we split the real, as in the dance of the eternal Peter, they look at the trace of what is and exemplify it with their devices.

Do you think it is different in arts other than figurative, like cinema, photography, painting? Not exactly. Robert Schumann's Shadow is in his motivic convolutions another motif in a precedent and appears with the romantic double.

We listen to all this in the short piano pieces, 'Childhood Scenes', 'Wood Scenes'. Schumann's musical shadow is poignant. Gustav Mahler's Shadow will be terribly agonizing. Let's go back to the Disney dance.

But above all the restless and disturbing landscapes, as the word 'shady' means, the Shakespearean empyrean stands out: The Tempest has hit the Island, but the Shadow of the Spirit is magic, here it is made to appear by the High Bardo in a jaunty Servant's desk. It is he who, extinguishing any temptation to fall into darkness, restores to the Shadow the profile of the Dawn of Life, not Twilight. As in The Lux Fiat Bible.

Then everyone plays with whomever he wants. In the Italian Dictionary Treccani 'ombra' is: 'dark area, or less bright, of the surface of a shape'. As if to say, even the dark has its shadows.

Ah, I forgot, the Plato's Cave, and this closes the circle. Are shadows more real than reality?

Batsceba Hardy

Contributors:

Chan Chun Ming, Eddie Mac, Theodoros Topalis, Adriana TB, Ian Ben Yahuda, Bogo Pečnikar, Jay Gadong, Roxane Atlan,  Jurgen Warschun, Yer Nevilos, William Henry Reodica, Hila Rubinshtein, Dave Casundo, Batsceba Hardy, Marco DM, Mario Spedicato, Pacho Coulchinsky, Masaki Kasai, Niklas Lindskog, Orna Naor,Yulia Olshansky, Elpi Juan, Greg Scott, Orlando Durazzo, Yael Gadot, Raymond Tanhueco, Randy Arisgado, Richard Keshen, Rey Maglasang Pelayo, Roberto Bon, Pierantonio Brianza, Mike Perez, RJ Galgo, Ines MadDel, Karlo Flores, Daniel Albea Camino, John Bauer, Andrea Ratto, Luis Picon Carrasco, Stefania Lazzari, Harry Aaldering, Ivo Ferigra, Gerry Orkin, Dzung Viet Le, RJ Galgo, Charles Lafrance, Bertil Nilsson, Jim Darke, Don Scott, Johny, Elisabetta Merlo, Keef Charles, Laurent Penvern, Nuno Vasconcelos Branco, Robert Bannister, Melvin Anore, Roberto Bartolini, Roj Jaso Bag-ao, Takashi Tachi, Vehbi Dileksiz, Shlomy Evron, Mark Joseph Requioma, Dominic Melly, Gabi Ben Avrahan, Liviu Ionita, Mhelz Catamin, Eduard Benaid, Bogo Pečnikar, Oliver Ferreras San Juan, Eduardo A Ponce, Neville Fan, Shlomy Evron, Ateneo Sta Ines, Yuna Jay Emilee, Gianni Boradori, Roland Groebe