By the Pulling Wind by Rory King

Rory will be signing his book during Polycopies

Rory King says the darkroom is where he is most himself. He prints nearly everything he shoots, all but the one or two frames that did not work at all. He prints quickly and roughly, enough to see the picture and move on. At the end of a printing day he tones the prints in tea or coffee, and the tone varies from one print to the next. He keeps four or five albums for the darkroom alone, and every time he prints, he puts on the same one.

The cover lines seem to know that routine. The tongue rests in its cot, then fires, then returns to the same place. “Forever anchored to its cot” could be read as the fixed point the printer keeps coming back to.

Some lines sound like the chemistry itself. Speech is “sieving the loam,” plucking words from the mire, which resembles an image rising slowly in the developer. “Suspended in thin ice” suggests a print hanging to dry, nearly finished and still able to be lost. “Cannon-smoke settles on cracked lips” fits the air of a room with the door shut, breathed for hours.

King’s portraits are of friends and former partners, and the lines are just as close. “Our eyes drawn to action, spilling their secrets on ashen cheeks” could describe a face coming up in the developer, its features appearing first in the dark.

The title, By the Pulling Wind, could describe this from the other side. The wind carries things out of the room, and the printer decides what to keep.