Posted on: December 1st, 2008 Category: Families Author: jmc

The Last Couch..

A clear shiny plastic couch.  I have photographed 37 families on it across the states and now, its last images.

David Williams, the man who inspired me to produce the Roadside Families Project,  stands before the wonderful PVC inflatable.  I’ll digress. While driving across the country last July and August on our VeryAltF Summer tour, we started a “Pay It Forward” project - we photograph a photographer with their family with the conditions that they have to do the same for another photographers family that is willing to pay it forward, eventually creating a dominoe effect.  During our tour, I received an email from David asking if I would photograph him.  One of my role models wants me to photograph him?  I felt excited, honored and a little proud of myself, then the I realized that I would have to photograph “the” David Williams.  That “proud of myself” feeling quickly deflated and slid into nervous anxiety, realizing that I would be photographing not just a photographer but a man that has seen more photography then probably anyone else I know. David, you see, is also a print judge for print competitions for a couple of professional photography associations.

So, the first week of November I flew out to LA, where David was teaching one of his fabulous workshops with plastic sofa in hand.  I set up the shot, the couch, David stands in front of the couch, turns toward the camera and closes his eyes.   I left him to his pose and photographed the image.  His personal objects in the image, a leaf, a band with a heart on his sleeve and a piece of paper or is it a photographed turned in toward his heart to be hidden?  The heart on his sleeve was obvious, and I did not ask the meaning of the leaf or the photograph that he held to his chest, far better to wonder then to know.  What I do know is that in the hi-res version of the file above, I swear I can see the boyish face of his childhood photos that I have viewed in his slide show…..  The plastic couch now in the recycle bin, the image of David concludes my part of the project for Roadside Families (at least for now) and now its time for the project to continue on its own by the families we have photographed and those that they have, and so on…      

-.jmc.