c’ville box

In 1990 I took my first photography course under a die-hard Bauhaus disciple — the art school, not the band. On day one, the intimidating professor informed me through perfectly round metal frames that he would fail me without the prerequisite SLR. Broke, I held onto my tiny used Olympus XA and swore I’d prove him wrong.

What the photos lacked in technical achievement they gained in capturing rare moments and locations — the same Charlottesville streets and mountain light that would later find their way into Statik 3. Most negatives were developed full frame with the tell-tale burnt edge, photography as a third eye between imagination, journalism, and allegory. Thirty prints were packaged into a hand-made corrugated box. Maybe the curve was generous. I got an A+.

The pocket camera — stolen eventually by the Secretary of the Bishop of Rome, a long story — turns out to have anticipated Instagram by twenty years. The impromptu image, the in-the-moment frame, the darkroom filter: none of it was ever just documentation.