Roger Mertin – one of America's master black and white printmakers. Although he is one of the youngest of America's master black and white printmakers, Roger Mertin, born in Connecticut in 1942, undertakes complex black and white pictures that require virtuoso control of darkroom processes. The black and white picture at right is one that Mertin counts among his finest. It shows a television screen floating in a black void over a reclining female nude, and was taken by aiming his 35mm Nikon camera, equipped with a wide-angle 28mm lens, into a mirror. Reflections from the mirror can be seen along the model's leg, in the foreground, and buttocks. "When I made this black and white photograph." explains Mertin, "I was interested in exploring the possibilities of black and white pictures within black and white pictures." He used this approach to express, with powerful visual impact, the confrontations that perplex modern man: between female and male, between the sensual and the cold, between nature and artifice. With a black and white picture like this, depending so heavily upon intellectual interpretation for its impact, meticulous care in black and white printing was of primary importance. Mertin used Agfa Brovira grade 4 paper for high contrast. He stopped down his enlarger lens to f/11, so that he could give a total exposure of 18 seconds, time enough for burning-in and dodging. After exposing enough to bring the flesh tones of the model to the desired degree of darkness, Mertin gave the television - screen portion of the black and white print extra exposure. This made it stand out strongly, in sharp contrast to the delicate delineation of the girl's form and the rich, velvety black of the detailless background, so that the model and television image seem to hang in space.