“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice. “I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too!”
Sometime last November, I took the subway to Brooklyn and showed Stephen Mayes, the Director of VII Photo Agency, an advanced edit for my upcoming book. Stephen is one of the very few people I ever discuss unfinished personal work with. He flipped through the images on my iPod touch, while I had a very nice, well done cheeseburger – my favorite American food. Soon after I got back to Manhattan, I received an email from him with the offer to write an introduction for my book. If I remember correctly, I thought something along the lines of “yikes”…
The book, “Color White Gray Other,” is out now. You can flip through an online version of all 168 pages (here). It includes Stephen’s essay: “I Am What I See” (just click on the book symbol, above, or follow this link, and you’ll get a very nice full screen view that you can further zoom into). To me, the essay is a little frightening, because it cuts right through any defense systems I thought I had installed so carefully. Well, so be it. When asked, Stephen insisted that what he wrote is purely based on looking at the images, not on any conversation we had over cheeseburgers. I think that even if you are not at all interested in photography at all, let alone my photography, the essay is still a great read.
That being said, I certainly don’t mind if you flip through the rest of the book and look at the images too… If you like what you see, you can get yourself the printed book online (here).