PREFACE

Most of my favorite photographs are made when I'm surprised-- not when I'm ready. Like a grouse hunter hearing a flush. Suddenly the target appears. Then the seconds before it vanishes behind a tree or over a ridge. The reactive shot made, or missed. The image captured, or lost forever.

The best photograph makes you pause, arrests. It can ask a question. It can be ironic. It can be humorous. It can be poetic, but not a post card. Unlike much of Annie Leibovitz' work, it's not posed or a family snapshot (my grandchildren notwithstanding). It's a moment that makes you wonder what came before or after.

Memorable photographs can be out of focus. They can be rusty. But they must speak to your sense of joy or sadness or compassion or nostalgia or hope---or simply curiosity.

Some people make pictures of barns and fields. My only interest is the people who build and plow them. The static holds little attention for me. That's not to say that barns can't be artistic, or clouds or flowers. But the challenge is more technical than visceral.

I don't think any image grasps us like ourselves. The barn---or the carpenter?

What I know about cameras fits into a baby food jar. Nearly fifty years ago I applied for a job as a reporter on the Union County Journal in central Pennsylvania. I was still in college. No writing slots were open. "Can you use a camera?" asked the editor. I lied--and was handed a double-lens Rolleiflex and shown the way to the dark room.

The town had one photography store. In the back, dropping strips of film into deep, lead reservoirs, I found Charles Schuyler (known as "Sleepy" because of his lazy eyes).

He saved me.

My first few weeks on the street were disastrous. I was lucky to get a photo on the front page.I would bring Sleepy images of weddings and town meetings where the subjects bore no faces-just full moons. I can still hear his raspy laugh as he showed me the crude art of burning. And I can still feel the pinch from extracting hot flash bulbs.

The dark room soon became my addiction. The wash of red light. The smell of chemicals. The cropping and dodging. The miracle of the slowly emerging image. The utter loss of time.

I still have the Rollei. With a fixed 75mm lens and a view finder that you looked down into, it forced me to get close to my subjects--whether they be a wrestler or a sudden Vietnam war widow. Even today, armed with a telephoto lens, I still fear the guilt of being caught intruding. The embarrassment of blowing my own cover. Such a natural fear has cost some wonderful photographs.

Most of the photographs in this book came from black and white negatives that have been dragged through more than a dozen moves. Slid from box to box in overheated attics. I wish I had all the negatives I ever owned. Just as I wish I had just a fraction of digital images that, through my own ineptitude, disappeared into the ether.

hope you enjoy a small part of what remains.

John Sherman

Paris, Virginia 2023