I’ve been showing the draft or proof copy of the book around, and there have been some comments made about my selection of images. I’m only going to say this once, so read carefully:




I didn’t pick the pictures for whatever reason you’re thinking. This book is the result of 5 different edits, three of which were complete restarts from the original 25,000 pictures. It took me 6 months to get this far, a herculean task if there ever was one, so you really won’t ever get the full reasoning behind what is in the book. Photographers and picture editors reading this, if you’ve ever had a 25,000 picture project all in your head, will understand what I’m talking about.




There are two reasons I put pictures in the book: either they told a part of the story, I thought they were a good picture, or more usually, both. Of the individual portraits, I tried not to have more than two or three of anybody, and I think I did that… but there are also pictures that are more about the things that are happening, and I didn’t really think about who was in those at all. Except I did, kinda. The second edit featured a couple of people more prominently, and I actually trashed that one because I didn’t like the way it felt with those people at the front. It’s not about any one person, or any three, but about an indefinite number somewhere between 20 and 50, about what you can fit into a two bedroom apartment for a decent party.





That said, I think I’m going to go back and write little vignettes about the pictures… not captions, but stories to go with them. Not for all of them, but for some of them.




Note for these photos: they’re all from last wednesday, there’s more coming, a lot more, I have an infinite backlog right now actually. Too much other stuff going on to post, but I’m trying now. There was an unintentional hiatus while I was sick and an intentional one the past couple days, but I’m officially back.

Posted by Matt on 2009-09-20T00:00:00Z GMT