The Black Box & The Light

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Imagine you are in an empty event venue or club out of opening hours. No lights are on. It is dark. These venues do not have windows. They are like a black box. Empty. The moment life comes into these black boxes is the moment the light goes on. It becomes magical, fascinating, interesting and story telling, supporting the music, the speaker’s or representing a vision or a theme. The box becomes whatever the light makes it to be.

A black box is empty without light and the light needs the black box in order to create whatever it wants to create. Pull it on a bigger scale and we get to the solar system, which has the black mass/substance (scientists are still researching what it is made of) and the light known as the sun. The light shines on objects and the contrast with the black mass creates the stars we see on the sky. Lets go smaller and the sun creates the colors we see in the garden or lets go very small, yet very big, our cameras. The camera is also a black box. The moment we let light into the camera, something is created, life comes into the black box “camera” and an image evolves. Just like with the venue, we decide what light comes in and how it is directed within the box to create the image we want to see. Well, fortunately sometimes the light has its own ideas and surprises us with the results and its own creativity, just like it does in our eyes.

So, what is the relationship between the black box and the light? They need each other. Without light no life and without black box no creation. Light needs darkness – the black box - to be seen and darkness needs light to be filled with life. In
photos we call it contrast. A photo without contrast doesn’t have depth or call it life. The duality of light and darkness creates something new. They are a creative couple.

Ute Sonnenberg, www.rohoyachui.com