Mena, Arkansas, c. 1986
Over the years, most of my prints have been given away or destroyed. I’ve got all the exhibition prints from shows, but other work mostly hangs out in my memory. Most of the people I’ve shot pictures of have more intact copies than mine; I was always too busy working to archive much of anything in accessible form. I left California with thousands of prints, but a series of water-park type disasters have ruined them all. Besides that, all the really good prints were given away to the people who could use them most (like Slim).
It didn’t surprise me that much that when Slim came to Arkansas in 1997, he brought with him a box of my prints (all he had left, I suspect). When his attempt at “a new start” failed and he returned to California, it also didn’t surprise me that he gave them back to me. He also left a four-track master tape labeled “Gospel Album,” his car, and some trinkets. There is a lot I’d like to say about the last time I saw him; but it pales in the light of the memory of that first phone-call after he got back to California that told me he’d been in the hospital due to overdoses three times in the space of a week.
It’s hard to think about this stuff. So I’ve been digging out some other lost memories, such as the farm I grew up on. There’s too much to say about everything. I really need to say something regarding the bastard copies of some of my photographs that popped up. It isn’t being displayed that bothers me; it’s that anyone would have the gall to claim the crap copy as their own. There are fresher, better versions on the way soon as I can bear to look at those negatives again. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive about it, but grief is a difficult thing, especially when it is stretched out over decades.
