For the first time in a couple of years, I am teaching a beginning black and white photography class.
A young woman in the class made some pictures at an open-mic night at the local coffee shop. Her pictures reminded of some of my earliest pictures.
I open an old box of photographs in my office labeled First Things. I found the pictures, and in going through my first year of photographic prints, I was struck by something. I was struck my how quickly I developed an understanding for photographic materials. My prints seemed to much easier than the ones my students kept showing me in the afternoon.
These pictures struck me early on, somehow referencing LSD and mysticism (nothing was constructed in the frame – we all three staged the photography simultaneously, and without ever speaking of it until after the prints were developed – there was just a sense of the picture needed in the air).
Brian Arnold 