sketchbook no. 13

The other night at Red Fox, Ryan, Mikiel, Allison, and I were looking at photos we had taken over the past few years. We all had our phones out, cooing over memories and hair cuts. A few nights before that, my friend Greg, a friend from high school visiting Portland, had sat on the edge of my bed and scanned my photo album. He asked about some of the newer photos, made jokes, inquired about friends. Then we flipped through the older photos from high school. Do you remember her? Remember when this happened? Did you ever do this while at ASFA?

We looked through the photos I had taken out of Tony, talked about him and his art and his life and his death and that time he slapped me and that time we thought about running away to Manhattan together.

Why don't we do that? Have little photography viewing sessions. Particularly with printed photographs. I love printed photographs. I miss having little prints all over my house.  Growing up, our foyer was devoted to photographs of family, hanging on walls and collecting dust in frames on the top of the piano.

I propose asking little groups of friends to submit photo albums of their favorite photos. Let's print everything. Then we ask that group of friends to come in, sit on a couch, look at photos, and reminisce. And we'll do little groups of this all night long. We can look through everyone's photos and watch friends share memories and hear all the secret histories of these prints.