Category: Photography- Jeff Ward

I ran across this map for printing in an old box of stuff. I was thinking how easily I forgot the sheer difficulty involved in printing the photographs for Invisible Light. Sort of like childbirth, I guess. A lot of those images took an entire day of mapping and sketching, of cutting masks and burning and dodging, of sweating— to make the pictures look natural and “easy.” Easy my ass.

I also begin to wonder just how many times I can write the phrase “I was thinking . . .” in a single day.

M and J were in love. However, J lived with another man. The other man wasn’t nice. A few weeks after I made this photograph (a one-off I found in a box, damaged) J asked me to take photographs of a different sort. I stepped outside the bar, and J rolled up her sleeves and pointed at the bruises.

“Can you take some pictures?”

“In case something happens to me, I want someone to know”

She rolled up her pants legs, and I took close-ups of the places where the bruising was bad. There was a bruise inside her mouth where he had slugged her, but I didn’t have the right equipment with me to photograph it. A sports car came roaring into the parking lot. J ran around the corner and I heard the squeal of tires. J left with the man who had beaten her.

When I saw J next, she didn’t ask about the photographs of the bruises, but she loved the pictures with M.