The Key

How each photograph in Finding Light was made.

Every image here was photographed on the same copy stand, under the same lights. Prints are on Fotospeed Platinum Baryta or Permajet Baryta Rag, and were rephotographed. Objects were photographed as they are. The screen images — all of Lila's, and three of Sophie's — are photographs of a phone screen, taken the same way, on the same stand.

The generated images were made with Google's Gemini image model, run inside Adobe Firefly, then composited, retouched, graded, printed and rephotographed like everything else.

So the line below each chapter says only where the picture came from, not what happened to it afterwards. What happened to it afterwards was the same for all of them.

Six origins: photograph — mine · photograph — family · object · object made for the fiction · generated · generated from reference.

Count

Photographs — 13 Objects — 13 Generated — 15 No image — 1

Part One

Chapter One · FRANCIS — New York City, 1948 — generated

Chapter Two · DARLA — Catskill Mountains, 1964 — generated

Chapter Three · SOPHIE — New York City, 1991 — generated

Chapter Four · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Five · FRANCIS — New York City, 1948 — generated; Francis's photograph, in a Darla chapter

Chapter Six · SOPHIE — New York City, 1993 — object

Chapter Seven · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Eight · DARLA — Rochester, New York, 1969 — generated

Chapter Nine · SOPHIE — New York City, 1993 — generated

Chapter Ten · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Eleven · DARLA — Rochester, New York, 1969 — generated

Chapter Twelve · SOPHIE — New York City, 2003 — object; the same blanket as Chapter Twenty-Six, thirty years apart

Chapter Thirteen · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Part Two

Chapter Fourteen · DARLA — New York City, 1970 — generated

Chapter Fifteen · ROSE — Rochester, New York, 1970 — object

Chapter Sixteen · SOPHIE — New York City, 2003 — object

Chapter Seventeen · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Eighteen · DARLA — New York City, 1970 — generated; the print comes out of the sleeve in Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen · ROSE — Rochester, New York, 1970 — object made for the fiction

Chapter Twenty · SOPHIE — New York City, 2004 — generated

Chapter Twenty-One · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Twenty-Two · DARLA — Rochester, New York, 1973 — generated; the same street and the same summer as Chapter Thirty

Chapter Twenty-Three · ROSE — Rochester, New York, 1974 — generated; set into a real Polaroid in Photoshop

Chapter Twenty-Four · SOPHIE — New York City, 2004 — object

Chapter Twenty-Five · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Twenty-Six · DARLA — New York City, 1973 — object; the same blanket as Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twenty-Seven · SOPHIE — New York City, 2007 — generated from reference; my own photographs of my Rivington Street kitchen

Chapter Twenty-Eight · LILA — Rochester, New York, 2026 — object

Chapter Twenty-Nine · DARLA — New York City, 1973 — generated

Part Three

Chapter Thirty · HENRY — New York City, 1973 — object made for the fiction; the picture on the slide is generated. The same street and the same summer as Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Thirty-One · DARLA — New York City, 1973 — generated

Chapter Thirty-Two · SOPHIE — Wellington, New Zealand, 2026 — photograph, family

Chapter Thirty-Three · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Thirty-Four · DARLA — Newark, New Jersey, 1973 — object

Chapter Thirty-Five · SOPHIE — Wellington, New Zealand, 2026 — photograph, family

Chapter Thirty-Six · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Thirty-Seven · DARLA — El Salvador, 1989 — no image. See below.

Chapter Thirty-Eight · ROSE — Rochester, New York, 1989 — object

Chapter Thirty-Nine · HENRY — New York City, 1989 — object made for the fiction

Chapter Forty · SOPHIE — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Forty-One · LILA — New York City, 2026 — photograph, mine

Chapter Forty-Two · ROSE — Rochester, New York, 2026 — object; Francis's camera

Chapter Thirty-Seven

No photograph.

Darla's war chapters carry no image. This is the one that falls within these forty-two. It is set among real people whose suffering has nothing to do with mine, and I did not want to make a picture of it.

A note on the generated images

The generated images are a closed set. Nothing further will be generated. Where a picture was made rather than found, this key says so, and the number is the number.