Found Silhouettes: Photographic Beauty and Mystery

 

These found photos of silhouettes were not taken in the studio, where images can be painstakingly arranged to be crisp or noirish. Theses are snapshots of scenes taken in natural light. The simple outline of darkness and empty spaces creates powerful images. We wonder what’s real and what isn’t? Which is the positive and which the negative?

It all harks back to the parsimonious mid-18th-century French finance minister Étienne de Silhouette, whose hobby was to cut paper shadow portraits. He kept the cut out shadow and removed the rest. His compatriot, the artist Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968), made his silhouettes by cutting away the subject and leaving behind the surrounding paper. Whichever way you do it, silhouettes make us marvel at how nothing has become something.

Robert E. Jackson, from whose snapshot collection these pictures are taken, invites us to do just that: to imagine the stories in the images and between.

 

 

“With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,
Who among them would try to impress you?”

– Bob Dylan, Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

 

 

“Actually, I do happen to resemble a hallucination. Kindly note my silhouette in the moonlight.” The cat climbed into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to keep talking but was asked to be quiet. “Very well, I shall be silent,” he replied, “I shall be a silent hallucination.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

 

 

I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna be
‘Bop-bop-bop-bop
You’re gonna give your love to me
Bop-bop-bop-bop
I want to love you night and day
‘Bop-bop-bop-bop
You know my loving not fade away
Bop-bop-bop-bop
Well you know my loving not fade away

– Buddy Holly, Fade Away

 

 

 

“She was incomparable in her inspired loveliness. Her arms amazed one, as one can be astonished by a lofty way of thinking. Her shadow on the wallpaper of the hotel room seemed the silhouette of her uncorruption.”

— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

 

 

Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
It’s not warm when she’s away
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
And she’s always gone too long
Anytime she’s goes away

– Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers

 

 

I’d take my place in the line and wait my turn at the table. The table shaped like a cross, with shadows of a thousand murdered men printed on it, silhouette wrists and ankles running under leather straps sweated green with use, a silhouette neck and head running up to a silver band goes across the forehead. And a technician at the controls beside the table looking up from his dial and down the line and pointing at me with a rubber glove.”

— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

 

 

This is the smallest caliber pistol cartridge made; but it is also one of the most accurate and easy to hit with, since the pistol has no recoil. I have killed many horses with it, cripples and bear baits, with a single shot, and what will kill a horse will kill a man. I have hit six dueling silhouettes in the head with it at regulation distance in five seconds.

— Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway on Hunting

 

 

… Well, let me tell you ’bout the way she looked
The way she’d act and the colour of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool
Her eyes were clear and bright
But she’s not there

– She’s Not There by The Zombies 

 

 

Took a walk and passed your house late last night
All the shades were pulled and drawn way down tight
From within, the dim light cast two silhouettes on the shade
Oh, what a lovely couple they made

– Silhouettes by The Rays 

 

We’ve lots more from Robert E. Jackson on the site. And you can follow him here for more great stuff.