Keith Kozloff produced the images we’re featuring in this issue of Rootstalk between 1973 and 1976, using a medium format camera similar to the Yashica he used in his youth. Since he didn’t have access to a darkroom during these years, he had the negatives processed commercially. The responsibilities of career and family pushed photography to the side until a few years ago, when retirement made it possible to revisit his passion, renew it, and begin to experiment with various techniques and subjects. The advent of digital photography had lured Kozloff away from his former exploration of grey tones, but in 2017, he rediscovered a trove of his old black-and-white negatives in a shoe box. He had some professionally digitized, and he used post-production software to correct the various imperfections and scratches in the original negative emulsion.

“As a group,” Kozloff says, “these images harken back to a somewhat romanticized view of rural life that I held at that early stage in my development as a photographer and as an adult.”