How monochrome photographers exploit light - The hard, vertical line of white light that pierces the shadows in Charles Harbutt's monochrome photograph at the right demands attention. It draws the eye directly into the black and white picture and like an arrow points to a young boy's hands pressed flat against a wall. The light and the hands convey the monochrome photographer's thought: the boy is blind; he has discovered light in the only way he can, through touch. This black and white picture is one of a series Harbutt made of children at The Lighthouse in New York City, an institution for the blind. Harbutt had noticed, after observing him for several days, that this painfully deprived boy used his hands to feel for the warmth created by the warm rays of the sunlight that threaded the narrow space between two buildings each afternoon at about the same time. It was the only light needed for exposure, and it made Harbutt's black and white picture. Like Harbutt, the monochrome photographers who took the black and white pictures on the pages that follow used the physical characteristics of light to dramatize reality: direct sunlight for a hard, graphic black and white image, hazily diffused daylight for a mysterious, romantic quality, directional light to accent a figure or emphasize form. They employed its qualities deliberately; no monochrome photograph shown is a lucky shot. Each results from a conscious awareness of what light can do in a monochrome photograph. It is common for a serious monochrome photographer to spend a great deal of time at this, experimenting with light just as he does with black and white cameras and black and white film. George Krause is one who, like several other outstanding professionals, spent the early part of his career making all his black and white pictures on overcast days, when the illumination was diffuse. When he felt he had mastered the use of such lighting he turned to scenes with harsher contrasts of shadow and brightness-with the stunning results shown on page 38. Such concentration on one particular aspect of light helps a monochrome photographer learn to "see" light-i.e., to visualize the differences that changes in illumination will make. With this educated and heightened sense of perception he can make a black and white picture live up to the original Greek meaning of the word monochrome photography: "light writing." Shadows, reflections, patterns of light, even the light source itself may become the heart of a composition in which solid objects are incidental and light is the theme. Irwin Dermer's portrait of the rectly into it, any light source included ness. We not only see the view but English actress Dame Edith Evans as a in a composition tends to overwhelm understand why it looks that way, as in lonely old woman in the movie the subject it illuminates. But when a Robert Gnant's monochrome photograph of a shepherd with his flock by moonlight her sun an electric bulb. Light coming directly from a single source-the sun, a spotlight-is harsh, creating bright planes and deep shad¬ows, as in Ray Metzker's monochrome photograph of a truck in a city alley. It is a black and white picture of absolutes; detail fades in the deep blacks and bright whites. The composition is bold, graphic and without emotion. A face monochrome photographed with such light coming directly into it is more likely to appear as a sketch than as a portrait, since broad generalities are stressed rather than the detail that defines personality. Reflected or diffused light-from the walls of a room, from the sky on an overcast day-is soft. It fills in shadows and plays down contours. Neal Slavin's study of an amusement park lying dormant in winter, with all the people, fun and excitement gone, shows a scene almost faded from view; the soft light that filters through a snowstorm seems to come from everywhere and nowhere.