Double Exposure B&W (II)

Eight overlaid frames on 35mm black-and-white negative, where sacred towers, painted fish, and silhouetted riders trade places mid-roll.

Double exposure b&w / 35mm black-and-white negative (stock unidentified) / Double Exposure B&W (II) — Double Exposure B&W collection, 35mm film archive

The roll opens underwater without ever leaving dry land: painted fish with wide staring eyes swim through a grinning mouth and past a white parrot, one mural bleeding into another until the wall itself seems to school and drift. From there the frames look up — an airliner crossing a boil of backlit cloud with a darker shape ghosted through the sky, then an equestrian statue rearing straight into the sun, its rider haloed and half-dissolved, bare branches scratching at the bottom edge.

The middle of the roll turns devotional almost by accident. Four luminous rings stack themselves above a white temple tower like a levitation act nobody rehearsed. Seven bronze Buddhas sit in tidy rows on their shelves while a faint dome glows up through the tiled floor beneath them, as if the building were remembering another building. A ribbed classical dome surfaces in shallow water below a rocky bank, submerged and serene, the most patient of the roll's apparitions.

It closes with working things: a moored sailboat and its tall mast doubled against warehouse walls and a thrash of palm fronds, and finally a stone gable between two chimney-like columns, bare winter trees behind, a painted eagle's head staring out of the masonry. Every superimposition here happened in the camera, on one strip of 35mm black-and-white negative — the film simply refused to keep its appointments separate, and the roll is better for it.

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Related

Double Exposure / Buildings / Temples & Shrines / Lanterns

  • Double Exposure B&W (I) - Layered 35mm monochrome frames that let signs, boats, branches, and stone carvings occupy the same moment.
  • Double Exposure B&W (III) - In-camera collisions on 35mm black-and-white film: neon, water lilies, freight, and the long wait at the gate.
  • Cemetery - A single fall afternoon among old walled stones and white marble rows in Alexandria, Virginia, on 35mm color negative.
  • Boat Ride - One roll afloat off Bali — anchored masts, grey horizons, teak decks, and an island seen through mist.
  • Batur Bali - Caldera-rim frames on 35mm color negative — stairways, storm light, and the mountain half-hidden in weather.
  • Cancun - One descent from storm clouds to sand, shot on 35mm color negative along the Caribbean edge of Quintana Roo.
  • DC Loosies - Stray capital frames that drift from relief sculpture and marble colonnades to sunset silhouettes, a fogged interlude, and spires bending into the evening sky.
  • Dominican Republic - Beach light, back roads, and everything the windshield caught in between.

Images

Painted fish with large round eyes overlap a wide open mouth with white teeth and a white parrot in a doubled mural.
Two murals trade water: striped fish drift through a grin, eye to painted eye, while a parrot watches from the margin.
A small silhouetted airliner crosses bright, backlit clouds while a faint darker shape is ghosted over the left side of the sky.
One plane, two skies: the jet threads a boil of lit cloud while something darker leans in from the previous frame.
An equestrian statue of a rider on a horse stands in silhouette against a hazy sun, with bare tree branches at the lower left.
The rider takes the sun full in the chest and keeps going; the horse lifts a foreleg as if the light weighed nothing.
Four glowing rings hover in a vertical stack over a white temple tower topped with a finial, with tree branches at the lower right.
The tower gets a halo it never asked for — four of them, actually, stacked like smoke rings from a very deliberate lamp.
A sailboat with a tall mast is moored on calm water in front of warehouse buildings, overlaid with ghosted palm fronds and rigging lines.
The boat waits at the warehouse wall while a second exposure showers it in palms, rigging tangled with fronds.
Seven seated Buddha statues rest on two shelves against a tiled wall, with a dark door at right and a faint dome shape glowing on the floor below.
Seven Buddhas keep their shelves in order while a dome rises softly through the floor, uninvited and entirely welcome.
The faint image of a ribbed classical dome appears in shallow water below a rocky, sandy bank.
A capitol-shaped dome takes a swim, resting in the shallows like architecture that finally learned to float.
A painted eagle head appears across a stone gable flanked by two column-like chimneys, with bare trees behind.
The masonry grows a face: an eagle's head surfaces in the gable, beak set, between two chimneys standing sentry.