One Of My Favorite Images

I have a beautiful 11X14 print of this image framed and hanging on the wall but my scanner is too small. This is another one of those horrid old contact sheets that I used for the scan. The partial white circle on the upper left is where I'd punched a hole for the three ring binder where I used to keep them.

At the time we were living in a third floor apartment in New Bedford, Mass. I was playing around with using a pin hole aperture in front of the lens on my Minolta Autocord. I arrasnged several items on the kitchen table in front of the window. The sea gull is one of a pair of book ends. The other had a broken wing and eventually this one broke also. The ashtray was made by my father during one of his arty phases. I put the Minolta Autocord on a tripod, stuck the pin hole between the lens and a light yellow filter. I made several exposures, ranging from about one to perhaps five minute long. This particular one has a ghost cigarette. I'd forgotten that the cigarette was burning in the ashtray as part of the composition and picked it up for a toke about halfway through the exposure. I liked this shot best.

Pigging Out In North Miami ~ (a little of this, a little of that)

I miss contact sheets, those 8x10 black and white prints with all the frames on a roll printed on it. Lately they've been offering these "Index Prints" at the lab when you get color processed. They're much smaller than an 8x10 but if you click on one the image does get bigger. At least you can see what's in the photo.

Rene Ricard, Ben Lackey, And The Mystery Chick

This was shot in Boston and Cambridge the winter of 1962/1963. I don't have a clue as to who that blonde chick is but I do remember chatting wth her in a restaurant/sub shop/coffee house type of place in Harvard Square called Mike's Club.

Rene Ricard and Ben Lackey were guys I'd first met in my hometown of New Bedford, but at this point I was living in Boston and Rene was staying at Prescott Townsend's place on Beacon Hill. Prescott was Old Money, and lots of it. He was also very active in trying to bring homosexuality out of the shadows. Rene idolized him and Precott thought that Rene was special. Everything was fine until Rene went to New York and met Andy Warhol. He came back to Boston, but he'd chaged. Soon he was living at Andy Warhol's Factory. He kept up with his poetry and painting, and added movie acting to his repetoire.

So what was he doing on the floor? Honestly, I don't know if he was just turned on by the music or perhaps some wine and cannibus? Or perhaps...? Nah, magic mushrooms, peyote, and LSD hadn't arrived in our lives as yet.

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to scan and post an occasional contact sheet, something different! Yup, I still have the negatives too.