Now its getting strange

I came across this photograph of me photographing a woman for my project on the street while she was photographing me. Strange.

Photographers like nothing better than to take pictures of each other. Walk into any photo dept in any newspaper in the country you will see the walls plastered with images of photographers goofing for the camera. Gone are pictures of fires, riots and war, instead you are likely to find a shot of Gary the old timer on the toilet.

While in college a friend of mine actually talked his professor into giving him credit for a semester long project documenting a ritual called, "White Trash Thursday". He lived in a trailer off campus and with Deliverance playing on the VCR in the background we would all get drunk and photograph each other. This all culminated in him presenting his 'work" to the faculty.

The professors were not great and we all thought the classes were a joke. The extraordinary thing about school was being around a group of people who , for the first time in my life , cared about pictures as much as I did.

We critiqued each other's work, encouraged each other and took turns dating the same handful of female photo students. Every now and then an outsider would come into our group. We had a redheaded roommate for one semester from a farm town in Southern Indiana named Nelson. One night I walked past his room and saw him sleeping on a mat on the floor with his arm over his twin brother Neal who in turn had his arm on their younger brother Ned. Three of them lined up like cordwood.