“ His eyes entered everything like a needle even yet - punctured, looped, and then emerged - and he hung these pictures on a string like beads around his neck. For hours he fingered the air obscenely and when he moved, he felt they clicked.
- Bill Gass, Omensetter’s Luck, 1965.
For whatever reason this image has been sticking with me. I really want to take a photo of an old man dressed in period clothes wearing a necklace of photos around his neck. He would be reclining like the canonized corpse of a century dead saint. Except of course he would still be breathing and on his forehead beads of sweat would glint in the heat of a July afternoon. He might also sit in a beach chair wearing candy stripe cloth shorts and a ribbed A shirt. His necklace would comprise the corroded gilt cases of daguerreotype’s. He’d sweat. At his feet, dandelion would stir.
