Light and dark color botanicals in photo exhibit

Famed island photographer Franco Sal­moi­ra­ghi has spent decades documenting the life and times of Hawaii, creating bold images of everything from its natural beauty to its hard-working, friendly people.

A display of his work on view at the First Hawaiian Center, however, shows that less can sometimes be more. The display consists of 45 images of flowers and plants compiled from seven portfolios Sal­moi­ra­ghi created during the last 40 years of photographing the islands.

Despite the colorful subject matter, the photos are in black and white.

"A lot of it just had a lot to do with just the formalistic qualities of light and shade and tonalities and working with things like that," Sal­moi­ra­ghi said. "(It is) kind of a photographic exercise in some ways. Even in beginning drawing classes you do a lot with shading and that sort of thing.

"It’s something I’ve been working on since forever, since flowers are so ubiquitous in Hawaii."

Salmoiraghi captured the photos while working on various documentary projects around the state. Some were taken in the wild or at friends’ gardens, while others — particularly a series on night-blooming cereus — were shot indoors.

"It’s dark when they’re blooming and I brought them inside, then at first light in the morning, I would photograph them," he said. "I didn’t use any lighting."

Salmoiraghi found the cereus, a cactus, to be particularly intriguing, titling one of his images "Night Dancer."

"When they die I found them to be very beautiful," he said. "They start drooping, and that particular one was (made) later on that day, when they were … totally exhausted from dancing all night."

The images on display were created on film, rather than with a digital camera, and processed in the darkroom. One of the more remarkable sensations is to see the grain in the images instead of having everything broken down into pixels.

Salmoiraghi, who is known in the local photography community for the rich, lush quality of his black-and-white prints, said he is seeing a resurgence of interest in what is now referred to as "analog" photography, as opposed to digital photography.

"I think people miss the idea of handwork, of working with your hands and really creating something," he said, "So a lot of people are carrying film cameras."

Salmoiraghi added his own touch to some of the photographs by using a tea or coffee wash while making the print. During a normal printing process, bits of silver are washed away from a piece of white photographic paper, creating the image against a background of white. Soaking the paper in tea or coffee allows the tannins to color the white portions, giving the print a distinctive tint, as is apparent in the photo "Pala‘a Ferns."

"It’s a different way of colorizing in a monochromatic sense," he said.

Salmoiraghi is also known for photographing sugar mills as they closed around the state and the return of Native Hawaiians to Kahoolawe. While those and similar images have a powerful effect on viewers, he considers flowers to be "the antithesis of impact."

"They’re beautiful, and a lot of people don’t use the ‘b’ word very much anymore," he said. "But also I think they’re very metaphoric. Flowers throughout history have had a very deeply metaphoric quality about them. They can mean so many things — even their names can mean different things to different people. They can be very sensual, they can be very comforting.

"Flowers are used for so many different things in different cultures, from celebration to mourning. For me it’s just a visual pleasure."