Have you recently been living by any life philosophy? “… learn to learn, and try to learn for what.” What will baffle future generations about our day and age? That the appalling aspects of American culture were able to persist for so long. Are you aware of any conspiracies? The Grand Canyon is an alien mine. What is it that interests you about photography? That I’m able to funnel every other interest in my life into it. What is the worst thing about city life? Waiting on public transit in the winter. What part of the planet would you like to explore? The Caucasus. What do you think is the most plausible of the supernatural? Psychic connections. If you had to align yourself with a leader in history, who would it be? Historically, I tend to identify more with the losers. Pick a field of science to be an expert within. Sensory neuroscience. What moment have you most wished you’d had a camera when you hadn’t? It’s always when I’m driving. Choose a job you would be willing to do for free on the side. Photographer. Describe the most important photo you’ve seen. Sarah Charlesworth’s “Text,” and the ones discussed in Georges Didi-Huberman’s Images in Spite of All. How often do you take other people’s advice? Only as often as I ask for it. Describe a personal hell. Having just arrived in a city with no place to put my bags down. Which living person do you most admire? My partner Alana. On what occasion do you lie? Playing dumb in order to photograph in places I shouldn’t be. What was the last crime you witnessed? I’m not a cop. What is the best way to educate yourself? Using bibliographies as stepping stones. What is the next book you want to read? Stephen Barber’s Fragments of the European City Ultimate camera? A digital Pentax 67 that weighs one pound. Most used camera? Nikon D800E, Pentax 67. What object do you want? A book of only epigraphs. What object do you need? “I have everything I need, except what I don’t have.” How would you explain the internet to someone from the 1950’s? All of the world’s libraries on a single page. Are you satisfied with your level of physical strength? I am. Describe a cheap thrill. Skipping rocks. Pick a historic moment from the last hundred years to bring a camera to. Dresden in 1945. Are impulses more important than consequences? They were before adulthood. Which talent would you most like to have? Cello prodigy. What is your plan for the next 24 hours? Check my email incessantly.
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In Alan Huck’s image-text book, I walk toward the sun which is always going down, an unnamed narrator wanders a city in the American Southwest, where their observations and encounters become catalysts for rumination on a wide range of subjects. Shifting between photographs of the city’s peripheries and an interior monologue written in first-person, fragmentary prose, this hybrid essay draws on the ambulatory works of writers such as W.G. Sebald and Annie Dillard, both of whom are incorporated into the network of literary and cultural references interwoven throughout the book’s text. Part metafiction about the working process of a photographer and part cross-disciplinary exploration of one’s relationship to a particular place, the author utilizes the essential indeterminacy of both photography and written language to craft an exercise in attention that moves seamlessly between the two mediums.
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