Voices

When I saw what I had done here, I thought, "John Singer Sargent."  And then I thought, "Old Olan-Mills."  That's the way it goes with these projects for me.  One day I think I'm doing something cool and the next I think I'm a fool.  I've been feeling the fool for a few days.  I sent out some work to a big show in California and got back the letter. . . "so difficult to make the decision. . . so much good work. . . ."  But the people I work with like them, so there is that.  We've collaborated and had fun, too.  It's like being kids and making things up.  My friend C.C. is in the theater world.  Now there's a place to have your doubts.  In the end, what is there?  "Oh, I was once in a marvelous play. . . ."  On the other hand, there is no real evidence, either.  I'd ALWAYS remember myself as having been marvelous.  But with these photographs, there is hard evidence.  "Did you really think this was worth doing?" I hear future voices asking in a mocking tone.  "Shit, we had that done at the Sears Portrait Center," or," That looks like the photo I had taken for the high school yearbook."  Truly, don't think I don't fight those voices every day.

I thought that it was all over, though, my working in this way with the Polaroid film.  It is all gone, sold out everywhere.  So I took a chance and sent an email to the Impossible Project and told them of my plight, that I was in the middle of three big series and could not do this with any other film.  I sent them example images to convince them.  And they helped me out right away.  Great people, really, just wonderful.  So the project goes on.  And I get to imagine that it was the images that did it.  I want to let myself imagine them reading the text without interest, then opening the jpegs and saying, "Oh, my, we must help this fellow out.  Look at these!"

Or, perhaps, they thought I was the portrait photographer at K-Mart.