Hartnell College, in Salinas, has a large, airy gallery. About five years ago I had an exhibition of the farm workers series there. In December of last year I boxed up about 80 C-size loose prints from the Nighthawks series and gave them to Eric Bosler, who curated the earlier show. Although I had an exhibition of the Nighthawks work on the East Coast about two years ago, I’ve never shown those images out here. I’ve moved on to a new series, and I thought it would be a fitting coda to my involvement with the work to have a local show. I hoped that Eric would find the work worthy.
Eric liked the series, and asked for a few weeks to select images for the exhibition. He and a colleague sorted the prints into two boxes: in, and out. When I picked them up, I could hardly wait to get home and see which images they’d chosen.
I was surprised. Eric picked some of what I consider the best images, but many were MIA. There are images in the show that I only printed once, and, outside of my family, have never shown to anyone but Eric. The images that he picked that I wouldn’t have picked are those that don’t conform to the feel of the rest of the series. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and I may have too much affection for it.
Anyway, it’s nice to have a fresh perspective; the show will be quite different than if I had picked the images myself.
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