Page 9 - Contrast2012

Editor's Note

The image we used for the cover is a Photochrom print of drifting ice
near Spitsbergen Island, Norway. Photochrom is a type of lithograph
that was popular for a very short time around the dusk of the 19th
century, around the time the Columbian Exposition in Chicago made
technology sexy.According to the Library of Congress; the cover image
was made sometime between 1890 and 1900. Photochrom was used
largely on postcards, usually depicting sprawling landscapes, exotic flora,
or majestic architecture-you know, predictable bullshit. This image,
however, shows us very nearly nothing, just ice floating serenely in the
water, imitating the clouds above. The picture is beautiful because it is in
contrast.

Contrast. Get it? I have been clever.

In the fall, we had a writing contest where all the entries had to
start with "I remember" and end with "it was beautiful." I came up with
the idea because I thought it would be fun to make people work around
an extremely cheesy prompt, but as I consider the image of ice drifting
in that Photochrom postcard, I can't help but conjure up a cheesy, sen-
timental thought or two or my own. That postcard was made well over
a hundred years ago; anyone who bought one is long gone by now. But
the image still exists. The memory is alive.

The contest yielded some of the best student writing I have
seen in four years of workshops and readings. (Check out the winners
in the back of this magazine). These writers took a cheesy premise and
made it hilarious, unsettling, engrossing, and wholly original. That's
the kind of thing that will make me miss Contrast. It's not just this
magazine; it's a creative community, a community I will be leaving upon
graduation. But the magazine will take up permanent residence on my
bookshelf The memories will live on amid its pages.

-Ed

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