Page 86 - AlertDiver_Summer2011_web

T

he homage to Ansel Adams is almost too predictable when describing the photography of Ernest H. Brooks II. That they are both masters of the art and science of black-and-white photography is obvious when reviewing their body of work, although Adams specialized in landscapes of the American West, while Brooks derives his inspiration from beneath the waves. It is somehow appropriate that their photography is being exhibited in tandem in an impressive traveling exhibit titled “Fragile Waters.” Each communicates a unique vision and underlying passion to preserve and protect his muse, mother earth. In the Brooks family,

photography is a long and honored tradition. At the turn of the century Brooks’ paternal grandmother photographed nature with glass plates and the very early technologies for capturing still images. In the next generation, Brooks’ father was sidetracked from his studies in commercial art when he discovered Kodak 8x10 sheet film that he could process in his home darkroom. By the late 1930s his passion for photography was being passed on to his son; by the time Ernest II was enrolled in kindergarten his fingernails were stained brown from immersion in fixer, the final element in black-and-white printmaking.

It may be hard for today’s digital photographers to imagine the countless hours Brooks spent with his father learning photographic

techniques in an analog darkroom, but doing so clearly forged his path in life. I can relate a little, for I’ll never forget my first time standing in a black-and-white darkroom, illuminated only by the dull glow of a yellow safelight, and seeing that first print emerge in a tray of Dektol. Today, viewing digital images on even the best-calibrated monitor somehow fails to invest an image with the respect and significance a wet darkroom can instill. Maybe it was the tedium of the processes. The film had to be developed just right, to exacting standards of time and temperature, dipped in Photo-Flo so it wouldn’t water spot and then hung to dry. Once sleeved, a contact print was made, sandwiching the negatives directly to a sheet of paper coated with a

Ernest H. Brooks II

P h o t o s b y E r n e s t H . B r o o k s I I T e x t b y S t e p h e n F r i n k

In a Sea of Silver

84 | SUMMER 2011

“In his passion, Ernie took the road less traveled. When color photography dazzled us with the revelation of color underwater, he saw something different and courageously continued to explore his art in black and white … as light enters the water; the brightest colors are filtered out … the reds, oranges, and yellows being the first to disappear. So, by choosing a palette of black and white, Ernie captures a quality that is more true, more revealing of the sea, than the color images that so easily seduce us.”

— Jean-Michel Cousteau in the forward to Ernie Brooks’ 2002 book, Silver Seas: A Retrospective

Brooks’ images transform subjects more familiar for their striking color into their essential shades and monochrome tonalities, as seen in this image of a snorkeler above a shallow reef in North Tubbataha, Sulu Sea, Philippines.

IMAGING // S H O O T E R