The final quips

 

There will be all too few stories like this to tell you soon enough. So I had better get them in while they're still happening.

A young man came to the front desk of the library to pick up a DVD double feature of George C. Scott movies. We had to get them on Interlibrary Loan because we don't have as many old George C. Scott movies as we used to. I think this one had "The Hospital" which was pretty a big film, and then there was another movie rather more forgotten in time.

I considered the cover of the dvd for a moment as I checked the item out to the young person. He was maybe 20 years old. "I considered doing an impression of George C. Scott for you just now." I told him. "Only, two things prevented me."

"Yeah?" Said the guy with tepid interest.

"One. I wasn't sure you would know George C. Scott before watching the movies. And two, I can't do an impression of George C. Scott."

France in the library

 

Surely putting Japanese gates into my library yesterday was the inspiration for today's work. I struggled to get my tools to do what I wanted here, namely, find a way to put France into the Roseville Library. And though these pictures aren't as seamless as I was hoping they would be at first, I am resisting the temptation to put a bunch more Photoshop manipulation into them to make them more complicated and clean. Maybe the fact that they read as half double-exposure superimpositions, half real spaces, makes them more dreamlike?

Either way, these are an all too real and yet also unreal vision of my current feelings of being in two worlds at once, all while being a little bit in neither.

Japan in the library

 

After I finish up here at the library, after 31 years, my darling wife and I will be going to Japan for awhile.

Naturally though it is all starting to blur a bit together.

The lost archives of... the last few hours

 

Over the last couple of days I have been digging deep in the clerkmanifesto archives for some of our best overlooked photographs. I have more of these today, except, well, these were mostly made in the last several hours.

That doesn't mean they weren't deep in the archives!

You wouldn't believe how fast I can forget some of this stuff. Also I cannot keep up with my organizational systems. An hour after I finish a series involving baroque redesigns of flowers, or images turned into chinese tattoos, they are as lost to me as a bonus fox and skunk picture from the time of covid.

I'm just saying that simply because some of these pictures were done today doesn't mean they aren't forgotten treasures pulled from the deep archives of clerkmanifesto.

More pictures from the archives

 

With so many photo projects swirling around clerkmanifesto these past months, many very nice images were left on the cutting room floor. That is why over these few days I am presenting some of my photographs that missed their chance to appear on clerkmanifesto.

How sad they all were!

How happy they will be now.