'Dogbreath' Captures Tucson's Light and Absence

An exercise in time dilation, Matthew Genitempo tries his hand at wrangling Tucson’s black hole sun with his photobook 'Dogbreath'.

‘Dove says that yesterday someone took a picture of the black hole’

Scan of a photograph in ‘Dogbreath’ by Matthew Genitempo

Time acts differently in Tucson. The sun damages everything, too much life source leads to death. When I lived there I hung my washing up in the front yard. If I wasn’t careful the sun would burn a line through my clothes and, as if bleached, black cotton turned orange, marking the space where my shirt draped over the metal — exposed to the sun’s stern gaze.

When you stare at the sun directly it burns a hole in your retina. Everywhere you look the black hole follows you. A friend. A foe. A persistent reminder of our mortality, of our size when compared to our nearest star and everything that lies beyond it.

Matthew Genitempo’s photobook ‘Dogbreath’ acts like the sun, marking a hole in the lining of our minds eye. A cigarette burn that cannot be rubbed off. His photographs capture desert light and Tucson time through masterfully positioned images of the people, landscapes and animals lingering at Arizona’s periphery.

A standout image is one of a house overshadowed by a palm tree. As if wounded by its darkness, the stains on the surface of the garage match up perfectly with the jagged shadow of the tree, not pictured but looming.

iPhone picture of a photograph in ‘Dogbreath’ by Matthew Genitempo

While looking at this image, I imagine Genitempo sat on the curb waiting for the right moment to click his shutter. I picture him measuring the sun with his eye and, perhaps, with a light meter, to understand its effects on the film encased within his camera. As the sun creeps forward, he anticipates the perfect moment; when the jagged edges of the palm tree’s commanding shadow over take the stains on the garage door.

He tees up the aperture and sets his focal length. He waits for it all to line up. Looking though the lens of his camera — in the same way we do when waiting for an eclipse to occur in the skies above us — he acts only after all conditions are met.

Shoot.

iPhone picture of a photograph in ‘Dogbreath’ by Matthew Genitempo

In the desert you spend hours doing nothing; sitting, watching, waiting.

When I lived in Tucson I also attempted to abide by the rules of light, and yet my photographs, the photographs of an amateur enthusiast, were covered in harsh shadows. The complexity in my tones of black and white were crushed in the process of capturing so much blinding light. Genitempo’s photographs do not lack depth despite dealing with the same black hole sun.

The lightness of touch in his black and white tones feels reflective, not aggressive, as if the moment was one we wanted to remember with fondness. The sharp lines produced by the sun are diffused here, both white and black carry multitudes, their angularity is toned down. This is achieved by what I imagine is use of the ‘pulling’ technique on his film.

Another exercise in time manipulation. ‘Pulling’ is when a photographer takes their film out of its chemical bath before the predetermined timer ticks, compensating for overexposures or, like in this case, the natural conditions of a blinding desert sun.

Scan of a photograph in ‘Dogbreath’ by Matthew Genitempo

These photographs are of a deserted place in the truest sense. Deserted, as in affected by and born out of, the desert. The place from which all living things flee. The spaces between shots of people, in the book’s layout, mirror the population or lack there of in Tucson. ‘Dogbreath’ is all light but it is also all absence.

The term Dog breath is used to described the rotting mouths of dogs, whose dental hygiene is dependent on the help from humans. Tucson, on the edge of America, is a college town whose work-well has dried up long ago. While the land is beautiful, it is not kind, the people who remain are bound to a place that abrases them.

Genitempo captures them too, in between the silent moments, and through text interspersed throughout the book a faceless Dove comments.

Scan of a photograph in ‘Dogbreath’ by Matthew Genitempo