

An underwater photograph deep on the sea floor, in near darkness, with one narrow shaft of daylight coming down from far above and landing across her back and nowhere else; everything outside that light is solid black with no detail in it at all. The camera is behind her and close, just over her shoulder, looking past her down at her hands and at the dark rock in front of her, so we see her from behind: the long lit line of her back and one side of her ribs, her shoulder blade, and her head in profile beyond it, tipped down to the work with her eyes on her own hands. Only her two hands are in the picture: one is flat on the rock taking her weight, and the other holds a short blunt iron blade with the tip gone in under the lip of a black shell where the shell grips the stone, levering it away from the rock; the shell itself is whole and shut. Her long hair drifts up and back off her shoulders and across the frame, and the undyed cotton cloth knotted at her hips floats loose. Nothing else is in the picture. Two tones: the black water and the lit line of her back. Sharp on the blade under the shell. Fine 35mm film grain. In the lower right corner, a small pencil signature: Ziggy