W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #isaleshko, #afterword, #pigjoke

This is a postscript, an afterword, which I am putting after all the other words … .  I didn’t want to tell the reader what they were going be seeing before they saw it.  I wasn’t absolutely certain myself what I’d be wanting to look at and write about.  

Most photography people read photo books backwards so however you have found your way here, good. 

I celebrate the under attended — the three legged dog as it were.  

The inspiration for this comes from Bruce Bernard’s “One Hundred Photographs” (Phaidon 2000), a commission he fulfilled to organize . He fulfilled to organize a collection of a hundred great but unknown photographs.  My selection includes a few well known images but not that many.  Also this book takes some inspiration from John Szarkowski’s “The Photographer's Eye”, (Museum of Modern Art 1966) and “Looking at Photographs” (Museum of Modern Art 1973) although I quite consciously avoid the canon of important photographs. 

I like flat things, without much depth.  I respect that photographs are two-dimensional.  I like orderly things, I like seeing things horizontally — not quite letter box but elliptically — in the same fashion we see in real life.  Alex Webb says he doesn’t make vertical pictures because his eyes are next to each other other, not one one top of the other.

It turns out I like color a lot.  

These essays come from many sources.  Some are long; some short.  Some were commissions.  I enjoyed writing them.  I probably have some form of attention deficit disorder and need to flit from idea to idea.  I tried to organize them into a kind of sequence and tried not to write “kind of” or “perhaps” or “it seems”.  There are editors in the world to help guide one.  

I like writing about things I like.  If I don’t like something, it’s not my way to warn you away.  I simply don’t write about it.  

I love wonder and the story that follows.  This handsome portrait of Violet makes me grin or laugh each time I look at it.  Balance and secrets, huh?  Maybe it’s just a damned good picture of a pig.  The story may explain my methodology too.

One day a traveling salesman drove by a farm and saw a pig with a wooden leg.  The man stopped and asked the farmer, "Excuse me, but why does your pig have a wooden leg?  The farmer says, "That pig is very special.  One time my wife was cooking, and the house caught on fire.  The pig saw it, made a ruckus and saved me, my wife and kids."  Salesman: “Wow, but why does the pig have a wooden leg?"  Farmer: ”The pig saw a big storm coming, and we didn't.  The pig ran into the house and dragged us down to the root cellar and saved us again.”  Salesman:”Wonderful, but still, that doesn't explain   “.  Farmer: “One of my kids fell down the well and the pig ran to me and led me to where Jimmy was so we could rescue him”.  

Salesman: ”That is an amazing pig”. 

Farmer:  “Yep.  You don’t want to eat a pig like all at once.” 

Thank you fellow traveler for your patience and commitment.  

That’s all folks. 

©2021

#somereallygoodones, #theunseeneye, #wmhunt, #collectiondancingbear, #collectionblindpirate, #greatphotographs, #howilookatphotographs, #photographsfromtheunconsicous, #collectingislikerunningaroundinathunderstormhopingyoullbehitbylightning, #aphotographsogooditmakesyoufartlightning, #photographychangedmylifeitgavemeone, #isaleshko, #afterword, #pigjoke