For the Flickr Pool I created in conjunction with the Walker Art Center, the first assignment was a sort of photographic treasure hunt. The subjects of the hunt are: Pilots, Amateur Paintings, Unusually Tall People, Museum Guards, Sleeping Children, Neighborhood Bars, Supermarket Cashiers, Sheep, Sedans, Suitcases.
This list was derived from my business card circa 2002. This was the card I used while I was photographing Sleeping by the Mississippi (and is reproduced in the Walker’s exhibition catalogue).
As I said in the introduction to the Flickr assignment, I like these lists because they are excuse to get out the door. But the reason I used the list on my business card is because it explains my photographic practice. I don’t want to just photograph Weimreimers. I want my subject to be, as Robert Frank put it in his 1954 Guggenheim Fellowship proposal, ‘broad’ and ‘voluminous’.
For the record, Frank himself was a list maker:
If you wanna take a crack at my list, come join the Flickr Pool. We’re taking submissions until September 27th. Happy Hunting…
