VISIONS OF LIGHT

An experimental collection that pairs digitally manipulated photographs with poetry.

Klein, an advertising photographer of long experience, has won several awards for his art photography. After “a mind-expanding illumination, to thoughts of exploding bursts of light” in 1978, he began playing around with the idea of capturing such images on film. The first half of this book, “Experiments,” consists of Klein’s photos, each accompanied by a work written by one of four poets: Toni Partington, Lori Loranger, Zoë Loranger, and Daedra Pfeiffer. The majority of the images are abstract, geometrical compositions featuring overlapping shapes, such as squares, triangles, or circles, which often radiate from a central point. They can be multicolored, usually in saturated primary shades, or different values of the same color. These photos succeed mainly through their rich hues and scintillating compositions, but the few that depict realistic images have a more directly emotional appeal, such as the lovely “Blue Iris.” This close-up of the titular flower’s interior seems magically lit from within, calling to mind an undersea fairy palace. The accompanying poems tend to have much less impact than the images do; sometimes they clash, as when Partington’s “Forsythia Yellow,” which speaks of pretty jewels “wrapped in golden silk,” is paired with a less decorous image of boldly strobing amber globes. In the book’s second half, “Experiments Explained,” Klein provides details on the techniques for creating each image; “Blue Iris,” for example, features two exposures merged with Adobe Photoshop. This section also explains how Klein selected the poems, many of which were written beforehand and later matched to the images.

An often intriguing collection that may inspire experimentation by other photographers.