Tulsatime by eperlan

I just got back from a business trip, this time to Tulsa, OK on some client work. One evening we managed to take in the Tulsa State Fair, which for any photographer is a kind of heaven. Would have loved to spend the week there.

Billy, from Bardstown by eperlan

As photographers, we tend to shoot a lot of frames. And with mass storage, a lot of what we have in the archives goes missing or becomes "invisible" in the hierarchy. They are retrieved only through search or serendipity. I was in Bardstown, Kentucky seven years ago for a workshop—this is one of the many characters inhabiting Boone's Butcher Shop, and I love the photo for Billy's reticence to be revealed, contrasted with the very public dressing of the meats in the back room.

View this Gallery.

Mark Was Here by eperlan

UPDATED. Been exploring the East Marion Cemetery on Long Island’s North Fork, and I came across this article about the painter Mark Rothko’s gravesite there. His family has been petitioning to move his remains back to Westchester County. The Times piece is over a year old, and I couldn't figure out if he’s relocated, so to speak.

My last trip out confirmed it; Mark is still with us. Visitors have left their own calling cards, with crayon markings, some small stones atop his marker, and—as far as I could count—what appears to be about a dollar in change. View the Gallery.

Reflective Cities by eperlan

On recent weekend in St. Louis, Missouri, I realized I have ever been to an American city that fit my worldview so completely. A vast, time-traveled older Center, with layer upon layer of story, of rise and fall, rebirth. I’ll be returning with a bag full of NC160; a Nostalgia trip in realtime.

It got me thinking of a project (we all need projects) on how reflections add another layer of distortion to what we see—as if our daily vision weren’t warped enough, the cities we live in impose more layers of mirrored un-reality. 

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