Loosies

Orphan frames from the Virginia waterfront, where fog, flowers, and camouflaged moths all practice the art of disappearing.

Belmont Bay, Woodbridge, Virginia, United States / 35mm color negative (stock unidentified) / Loosies — Belmont Bay Loosies collection, 35mm film archive

Every roll leaves a few frames that belong to nothing but each other. These came off the waterfront at Belmont Bay in Woodbridge, Virginia, shot on 35mm color negative, and what unites them is a shared talent for vanishing. The first frame opens on cherry blossoms so hazed they read like a memory of blossoms — pink clusters ringing a soft window of blue sky, the whole scene bleeding light at its edges.

Then the haze wins outright. A white motor yacht sits at the bottom corner of a tall gray frame, riding water that has merged completely with the air above it. Nine-tenths of the picture is fog, and the boat looks less anchored than abandoned mid-sentence, a bright hull about to be argued out of existence.

The roll ends at ground level, where the disappearing act gets professional. A moth with mottled gray-brown wings presses itself flat against a concrete paver, nearly indistinguishable from the aggregate. In the last frame there are two of them, holding still on either side of a crossing of expansion joints — small dark deltas parked on the grid, hiding in plain sight and mostly succeeding.

Open the interactive project view

Virginia / Belmont Bay / United States / Uniforms

Cemetery - A single fall afternoon among old walled stones and white marble rows in Alexandria, Virginia, on 35mm color negative.
Fall Leaves - Three color-negative frames of leaf-covered ground and thinning trees along a Belmont Bay path in Woodbridge, Virginia.
Kodak 200 at Belmont Bay - Golden-hour shoreline frames from Woodbridge, Virginia, where a goose family holds the bank.
Same Shots, Two Film Stocks - One evening at Belmont Bay, photographed twice — matching frames from two different color negative rolls.
Snowfall - Five color negative frames from a Woodbridge, Virginia snow that arrived before the garden agreed to winter.
Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (I) - A color-negative walk through the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, from Dean Collection galleries to painted stone.
Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (II) - Neon, marble, and glowing resin traded back and forth through the glass of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
RVA Day Trip - A short color-negative walk through Richmond, Virginia, from new glass to painted brick to late-sixties chrome.

Images

Soft-focus pink cherry blossoms and green leaves surround a hazy patch of blue sky. — Blossoms as weather: pink crowding in from every edge until the sky is just a rumor between petals.

A small white motor yacht floats at the bottom right of a tall frame otherwise filled with gray fog. — The fog takes almost everything; the boat holds the last corner of the picture like a signature.

A moth with mottled gray-brown wings rests on a speckled concrete paver near a seam in the pavement. — A moth doing its best impression of concrete, and the concrete nearly returning the compliment.

Two moths rest on gray concrete pavers near the intersection of two pavement joints. — Two of them now, parked on the grid where the joints cross — still as ornaments, patient as stone.

Loosies

Related

Images