ripcordjerry (circa 1964)
When I was about eight years old my dad was working as a design director at a textbook publishing firm in Austin. One day he came home with a huge binder of photography under his arm, a collection of images from a photo shoot. He sat the binder on a table and I opened it to discover hundreds of photos featuring a trio of goofy circus clowns. I couldn’t understand why they needed to print the same photograph, over and over and over, 12 images per sheet. When I asked my dad about it he gave me a red grease pencil and told me the pictures weren’t identical and that I needed to identify where they were different and circle it. Sure enough in one picture a hand was posed differently, a balloon was moved slightly, a myriad of infinitesimal variations. We spent an hour going through a hundred photos until we decided on an image we both felt was the best and circled it in blue. It was a far cry from throwing a baseball around in the backyard or kicking his ass in Mario Bros. (though I did that too), but it was probably my first curatorial lesson, and one of the only times I got to help dad with his homework.
For those who have followed Colossal for the past year or so, you’ll know that I’ve started (and unceremoniously stopped) a number of regular themed posts after a few attempts. Flickr Finds has been different and I’ve received tons of feedback regarding each post from both visitors and photographers. It’s a task I look forward to every two weeks, and I hope you enjoy the 10th installment.
