Despite the whole “fashion photographer, blah, blah” title, there’s little, I know, very little, here to obviously do with fashion photography. There are clearly connections for me, hence “footnotes,” but I think so much about photography that it’s mundane for me to talk about directly, and I can’t imagine anyone being interested in hearing about lighting and technique and securing location permits, nor my liking Lindbergh and Roversi and so on and so forth. Rather, instead of talking on these things or the latest spread in Chinese Vogue, I go to other more obscure things that are equally as influential on my work and more importantly of much more interest conversationally. For instance, last night, rereading Camus’ The Plague, I was struck by this passage (recall, this was written in 1948):

There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.
[…]When a war breaks out, people say: ‘It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.’ But though a war may well be ‘too stupid,’ that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
–The Plague, Albert Camus, ©by Stuart Gilbert 1949

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2005