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Brownie Hawkeye images in “Plastic Fantastic” Exhibit at Lightbox Gallery

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Thirty years ago, I put away the 4×5 Speed Graphic I was using when I bought a broken Brownie Hawkeye camera in a thrift shop. I scoured the surrounding area (Swarthmore, Media, PA) and found about a dozen rolls of discontinued, outdated 620 panchromatic film at a mom and pop camera store. The images I made were very personal, very dark. It was 1984,  and the owner of the Book Trader Gallery in Philadelphia saw some of my earlier work in the Philadephia Photographers 1984 exhibit at the University of Delaware and offered me a solo show in his gallery, a sort of legendary place on South Street in Philadelphia. In 1985, Brownie Hawkeye: A Photographer’s Journal was exhibited at the Book Trader alongside pages of prose poetry from my journal.