My Shoebox

Nice to meet you here. This is my shoebox. If and when you make it here to this page, this site, I will be obliged to congratulate you. And I will have to put a mark on that column, that box of the tabulating accountant of happenstance... very much with vacillation and trepidation I shall whirl in a Dervish dance of gloat and happiness. David Vestal, a photographer and an engaging writer of all that involved the art of photography, once said - and I am paraphrasing - "take your photos; if they are any good, put them in a shoebox... eventually you will find an appreciative audience." He wrote for Popular Photography or Modern photography, a book perhaps, I don't remember, but that counsel stuck with me, if somewhat in a perplexing fashion. What's the use to labour and agonize over an image to shove it under papers in a drawer or hide it in a box.

And here we are. You opened my shoebox... it's full of photos and scraps, bit and pieces of scribbles. You will be my "appreciative audience," or not. It doesn't matter.

Let me tell you of another morsel in the box. It is infinitely rewarding jotting down a thought and then finding out an old dude long ago said a similar thing. I think we are all plagiarists somehow, reinventing how to say things said eons ago. To my surprise, it happened to me a few times. I must tell you someday of Walter Kröber.

Enjoy your stay.