Bill Metcalf, November 1964

It's photos like this, images that lay hidden in my files for 45 years, that have me shooting once more with size 120 black and white film in a Minolta Autocord or Rolleiflex. The handling is different than with an eye level camera, the whole way of looking at the world is different. It's a slower more contemplative way of working. Of course if you print directly from the negative, which is much larger than a 35mm negative, you can get some fantastic prints, nothing like these scans off the contact sheets.

Bill Metcalf was an artist friend of mine in New Bedford, MA. My bride to be, Stephanie, and I were in town to join my grandmother and my dad for Thanksgivng dinner. I was was also attempting to introduce Stephanie to my circle of New Bedford based friends. Bill was going to the Swain School of Design. He lived in a basement apartment on a hill (one end of the place was really a basement while the downhil side was but two steps down) a few blocks from downtown and a few blocks from the school. Bill always seemed to have friends dropping by. It was a good place for Stephanie to meet some of my friends.

I just about never hear from or about any of the people I hung out with in the sixties. We're dying off.

From Wilma Siegel's "Former Hippie" Series...

A couple of years ago I received an unexpected email from a woman, an artist in Fort Lauderdale, who told me that she'd found me via a google search. Not because she was looking for me but because she was looking for middle aged people who'd looked like Hippies back in the sixties, long hair, bell bottom jeans, perhaps a guitar or a VW Microbus painted up in wild colors.

Well, there were plenty of photographs of myself and my friends posted here on this blog and elsewhere. There were plenty of "key words" in the text for a google search to find. Her idea was to do a series of paintings of the way we look now. I emailed some links to some more recent photographs of me. I agreed to meet her at her studio and pose for a painting. While I was there I also shot some B&W ultra-wide angle photographs with myself in the foreground on black and white film.

She started sketching a huge painting. As I remember it, the canvas was about four by six feet! I guess I was there for two hours or so. She did some sketching and shot a few photos of me also. She also asked me if I was still in touch with anyone else that met her criteria. I gave her John Patteson's name. He later told me that he'd given her a few more names. I've never seen any of the paintings themselves but she did send me an 8x10 color print of the picture of me. A couple of weeks ago I got an email invitation to an opening of Wilma's paintings at a gallery in Ft. Lauderdale. It was scheduled for the same night as the opening of my photography exhibit here in North Miami. Maybe next time...