I took this image on my way to work one morning, in Coimbra. We had about a 45 minute walk to work, which we actually enjoyed -- most of the time.
One of the streets close to the University was lined with a series of town houses, mostly rental property, in not-so-good shape. The houses were not
very old but showed certain signs of neglect. The image is of a ventilation hole, providing aeration to the cellar below the house. I was fascinated by two things.
One, the design of the grate covering the hole. The grate was made of cast iron and very decorative. Someone, some day, must have sat down and designed
the cover for this ventilation hole. Ventilation holes are ubiquitous and their existence obviously not limited to Portugal -- and they all have different
covers! Then, my attention was attracted to the area around the grate. The house was in urgent need of a new layer of whitewash
and the edge of the hole had recently been fixed, imparting the image with a certain degree of interesting imperfection, which is now immortalized.
The image is a normal black & white photograph that was subjected to two sequential toning processes. A partial bleach and redevelopment in thiourea gave the image
highlichts a yellowish cast. This first processing was followed by a quick toning in an iron-based solution which colors the entire image blue. Together,
the two processes give a green tone. If left in the second bath for a
long time, even the darkest shadow areas acquire a blueish cast, which I wanted to avoid.
When one of my research students, Julia, saw this image, she became very intrigued with 'the hole in the wall'. She told me: "you must write a story
about this hole." After I insisted that I didn't have time to do that now, her reply was: "ok, you tell me about the hole and I write the story, how's
that?" So, I did have to write this piece, after all. Come, read Julia's story.
