you are so good directing domestic animals, i look forward to the biscuit films.

he is already going potty in the right place....

well, so far, he doesn't have too many options ;)

you'd be surprised

Absolutely perfect. The nonchalance of the being-filmed cat. The trash guy. The stillness. Stunning.

I got a new camera yesterday, a surprise gift from my son; a 1966 vintage straight 8mm Keystone K-774L. A wind-up job. Three rolls of unopened film, plus one undisturbed in the camera itself, about 3/4 shot.

Funny, I worked at a record store in a mall after I got kicked out of high school, in 1970. There was a kiosk sort of camera store plus processing joint right outside Jerry's Records at the Bucks County Mall on Street Road in Feasterville, PA, where I was the manager. The manager there was a friend of mine, guy I used to play industrial league hockey with. I'd give him a gigantically (and criminal) discount on new records and he gave me all the exposed film that hadn't been picked up in a year or more -- moving and still film.

Not very surprisingly, a huge percentage of the abandoned film included (usually) very innocent attempts at nudie stuff. The little woman getting into or out of the shower, pulling her hose up before she'd pulled her bra out of the drawer. Actually pretty charming and naive. I mean, no Pamela Lee and Tommy, no Tanya Harding's wedding night. The stills might as well had sound tracks: "They're better not be any film in there!" fairly shrieked and a sudden lunge for a towel.

I found the pictures sweet and curious, but my taste for them vanished rapidly after I saw snapshots of my English teacher, clearly posing for, I'd suppose, her husband. Still, the plain-ness and the blandly ill-composed photographs were fascinating to me. The pictures were shorn and accidentally cropped of any artifice at all. And I still love the unvarnished stillness and light of the art I most admire.

I've been taking pictures for nearly 30 years of street artists, slap-and-tickle portraitists who render toruists quite accurately in 10 minutes or so. They always (baffling to me, but I have neither education nor training) seem to start with the subjects left eye, presented on the right side of the canvas. So I've learned to quickly position myself behind and slightly to the right of the pastel/painter/whatever artist with his subject facing him. I frame these so that the back of the artist's head obscures most of his subject's face, trying to include only his/her left profile and to snap the shot when only a finished eye appears on the canvas or Bristol board.

The sidewalks around Central Park and Venice Beach in California have yielded thee best results. I used to always shoot B&W in NYC and color in LA. Now I've reversed the two.

Long, undoubtedly boring and too hoity toity, I'm aware. But I prefer to think about capital A art on my own rather than rely on commentary.

Then again, I'm a dick either way you slice it.

Thank you for sharing the film with us. My hat's tipped toward you Mr. Jimeye.

Guy Williams

Thanks Guy, loved reading this. Thanks for watching.