[MikeyC]

mr. hyde,

i really appreciate the reply. its always feels good when a stranger takes a moment for you out on the street. so to have someone put the time aside to actually write something in reply to you is a few steps beyond.

i had been wanting to hear about that for a while and decided to ask when you posted (i believe back to back) links to "farewell photography" and then the book "setting sun: writings by japanese photographers." farewell photography was literally like a bomb going off the first time i saw that. it changed how i felt and viewed photography, and even just work in any medium in general. and setting sun has been a constant companion for over a year at least and it never fails to teach something new with each read. it was nice to see someone whos body of work i admire pulling inspiration from some of the same places that i am.

i particularly was interested in the bit you were mentioning with the flash on the camera and its relation with the drinking. the flash certainly shares the brutality that drinking, or any sort of addiction/abuse, can often possess. i will have to dig deeper into the tomato books (having only skyscraper and process.) id love to see the images that arose around that time. it sounds like it would hit close to home for me. mmm... skyscraper, the book, seems like it shares the same feeling that you were perhaps going for when you were working on those drunken alley shots. again, it has a ferocity which could be connected back with flash photographs. i found it interesting, and a bit amusing, that you seemed to jump from the one end of the spectrum with that work to using the pinholes.

never directly assosciated the cellphone with pinholes but i certainly see many similarities. both blatantly reference the medium itself, not letting you forget that the photograph you are looking at is in fact... a photograph. its something you do not see enough of these days with everything becoming cleaner and sharper and brighter and faster... "more true" "truer colors" "more vivid color" "sharper scans". im certainly not speaking down on these things, theyre just tools to be used, but to see the cell phones knocking out these over pixelated vga sized images with the most god aweful color was incredible i thought. and of course they are much more convienient. and quite frankly cause fewer altercations on the street. but then, those "being yelled ats" and "almost fights" are all just part of the fun arent they?

again thank you for the reply. thanks for posting a link for pinholes as well. feels good to get nerdy and "talk shop" (even if only over the web) with someone whos work, across several mediums, has been a huge inspiration for the past ten years of your life.

mike c


and an edit several hours later at 4.30 in the morning. the "wayposts" page you put up is fantastic.