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The world changes, the photograph remains

Pentti Sammallahti is a Finnish photographer whose work is largely done in the remote (even for Finland) area where he lives. His statement (above) to galleryist Peter Fetterman resonates with me. It describes in one short sentence why I have been dabbling about with a series that I call "The History that we Live With". This began a couple of years ago when I was asked to curate an exhibit for the Highline Heritage Museum in Burien. It occurred to me that there were thing

Difficulty of production doesn't count.

Totem Pole Carver -- Marymoor Park Heritage Festival Back in my dim and distant days of camera club membership that was a line often heard during club print critiques -- usually in defense of a not-very-well done print. By and large I agree. If the print "doesn't work" then how hard it was to print doesn't count. How hard it was to print only matters after the print "works" -- but even then it only matters to the printer. It doesn't show in the finished print -- nor shoul

if you keep your heart and your eyes open, there is a gift waiting for you at the corner of every street.

The more I think about it (the longer I think about it) the more I'm convinced that my all-time hero is Édouard Boubat. Not only do I keep returning to his photographs but admiring who and what he was. I was thinking about that when I printed this photograph the other day. A few (ahem) years ago I did a documentary project on the Thomas Street Garden -- a city of Seattle P-patch on Capitol Hill a couple of blocks east of Broadway. While I was photographing the garden and t