rickcox9

thank YOU so MUCH!

i’ve been remiss in not pointing out that in the last image, the one with the cut out text that begins; “all the while toward us…” of the 3 images, the Canadian dime on the left and the “Night Sky in August”on the right, the blurry photo in the middle is a kind of “messed up” version of a quite famous photograph*  taken by the also well known W. Eugene Smith.     * Gene rather invented the “photo essay” form, and spent long periods of time in various places, like the Pittsburg steel mills and for the one i used in the image here, Japan, where a small village had been horribly affected by eating fish caught in the local streams. the fish had been contaminated by mercury, and the women that had eaten this fish and later become pregnant, gave birth to children with serious birth defects. W. Eugene Smith was a fascinating guy, another thing he did besides photography was, he had a loft in Manhattan and he wired the whole place for sound and kept recorders going all the time. it became an after hours hangout for jazz musicians and they’d show up there after their regular gigs ended and jam until dawn. there’s a book about it called; “The Jazz Loft Project” and one can also access many of the recordings online. there is also an excellent biography of him titled; “Gene’s Smith’s Sink, a Wide-Angle View”. both of these books are by the same author; Sam Stephenson. and now that i think about it, there’s a film documentary on the Jazz Loft Project as well. on some streaming platform, Netflix or whatever.