The Neatest Part Of This Book I'm

In My First Class At The University Of Kentucky, My American Literature Professor Came In, And The First Sentence Out Of His Mouth Was "the Central Theme Of American Literature Is An Attempt To Reconcile What We've Done To The New World." Wrote That Down In My Notebook, And Thought, "what Is He Talking About?" But That's What I Think About Now. The New World And What We've Done To It.

My Parents, Grandmother And Brother Were Teachers. My Mother Taught Latin And French And Was The School Librarian. My Father Taught Geography And A Popular Class Called Family Living, The Precursor To Sociology, Which He Eventually Taught. My Grandmother Was A Beloved One-room School Teacher At Knob School, Near Sonora In Larue County, Ky.

I Was Giving A Lecture And I Said, That's Enough About The Photographic Life, Meaning My Biography, Now Let's Talk About The Life Of A Photograph. And In That One Instant I Got The Title For A Potential Next Book.

For Spiritual Companions I Have Had The Many Artists Who Have Relied On Nature To Help Shape Their Imagination. And Their Most Elaborate Equipment Was A Deep Reverence For The World Through Which They Passed. Photographers Share Something With These Artists. We Seek Only To See And To Describe With Our Own Voices, And, Though We Are Seldom Heard As Soloists, We Cannot Photograph The World In Any Other Way.

This Might Seem Off The Track, But An Interesting Thing To Me That Others Could Talk About Better Than I, But One Of The Growth Areas In Photographic Education Has Been The So-called Slow Photography.