Just beyond the spectrum of visible light lies the infrared. And it is from this mysterious realm — where commonplace things are literally seen with new eyes — that Mountain View’s Tony Coluzzi draws his art.
Coluzzi is a printer by trade, and well known on the Peninsula for his Mountain View establishment, The Darkroom, which specialized in black-and-white commercial work, both in printing and photography.
But he is a photographer by craft, and in the past few years has produced a library of disquietingly beautiful images. His silvery prints, shot in infrared’s ghostly, otherworldly light, will be on display next month at Books Inc.’s upstairs cafe on Castro Street.
Coluzzi began shooting at age 14 and never looked back. That was the year his brother bought him his first camera, and a neighbor gave him printing lessons in a makeshift darkroom in his garage. It was 1950s Los Angeles, and Coluzzi was transfixed.
“You watch that image come out of the tray that first time and my God, it hooks you,” he said.
He was practical in college, taking degrees in engineering and later a job as a systems engineer with Aerospace. But it wasn’t his calling. After moving to Palo Alto in 1964 (he moved to Mountain View in 1998), he took classes at De Anza and Foothill, studying photography and film, and when the time came, he quit his engineering job to start up a studio.
For 23 years beginning in 1978, Coluzzi owned and operated The Darkroom on Independence Avenue. As the business went digital over the last several years, there became less and less of a need for commercial labs, and his studio, once flourishing, became difficult to sustain. In 2001 he closed shop.
It was a turning point. A fine-art photographer for many years, Coluzzi, now 72, decided to refocus his attention on his creative work. He was particularly drawn to black-and-white infrared photography, a medium he had been experimenting with for almost 10 years and which had produced some of his finest images. There was a startling, luminous quality to the prints that captivated him.
It’s a quality that is unique to infrared film. With such film, he said, “you hit a certain threshold where the light goes from light to dark. It’s not a gradual progression of grays as it is in standard black and white.”
One of the challenges of working in infrared is that the photographer can’t see the light in which he’s shooting. But after 15 years of experimenting with the film, Coluzzi said, he now has a good idea of what he’s going to get. “It’s a matter of experience, of knowing,” he said.
He especially likes to work early mornings and evenings, when the vivid light bleeds into the shadows on film. He shoots whatever strikes him, with an eye to graphic, highly textured imagery.
“For me,” he said, “choosing a particular subject matter is artificial, it’s pushing the work into an unnatural shape.” Coluzzi said he’s more interested in discovering his subject than crafting it. His only theme, he said, is light.
He pointed to one of his landscapes. “I remember the moment,” he said. “I stopped, I said, ‘Wait a minute,’ and I saw it. So I took half a dozen shots and prayed one would turn out.”
So many of them do. The compositions are striking, with light like gossamer threads. And the prints have a glowing, silvery finish that owes to his many years of printing experience. They can be reminiscent of the Czech master Josef Koudelka — if Koudelka shot in infrared — with the same unnerving quality and haunting, dreamlike scapes.
It’s too expensive to maintain a studio these days, Coluzzi said, so he’s been printing out of a darkroom in his garage.
“I’ll change someday, I think,” he said, referring to the digital age which has eclipsed modern photography. “But to me, there’s something more organic to this way of doing.”
INFORMATION:
What: Exhibit of Tony Coluzzi’s infrared photography
Where: Borders Books Gallery, 322 W. El Camino Real in Sunnyvale; followed by Books Inc. Cafe Gallery, 301 Castro St., Mountain View
When: At Borders through Sept. 5, open daily from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.; then moving to Books Inc. through Oct. 5, open daily from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. and until midnight Fridays and Saturdays
Cost: Free and open to the public; all prints are on sale
Info: Visit www.tonycoluzziphoto.com or call (650) 941-0842
E-mail Melody Dye at mdye@mv-voice.com
