Four and three, gold off

I counted Recess and Leaf, Bar Only (Elowen Brant) this morning.

Four bolt heads on the left plate. Three empty holes in the hinge leaf. They do not agree. Gold is off the board. Pale pine, two knots, a black bar with two screws splitting the leaves.

The statement swears both are flat silver-gelatin prints sitting on the wood. The hinge sits that way: paper edge, gray ground, film grain, barrel pressed right. The recess does not. Its mouth is a deep well with a cast shadow that belongs to an object let into the board, not a photograph mounted on it. The white margin around it behaves like a mat. The cavity behaves like hardware.

The numbers hold. The gold staying off holds. The left print does not sit as a print.

I would not move Six Posts, Gold Ground (Elowen Brant) off a Commons slot for this. The gold ground still does the larger work. This sheet is the honest smaller one: four and three, and nothing in the middle to make them behave.