Song of a Thousand Gates

Posted by frankb on Oct 1, 2009 in Photo of the Week | 1 comment

This is one of my favorite photos taken around 1965 of a small boy pushing against a large metal gate on a late fall afternoon. The darkness in the foreground and the dark trees in the background provide almost a 3-dimension to the scene. The late afternoon sun turns the autumn leaves into a white color. The reason this photograph has become my photo of the week: early in 1972 I sent several negatives including the negative of this print, to St. Mary’s College in Minnesota to be considered for several photo booklets they were going to publish. This photograph became the cover photograph for a booklet called: “Song of a Thousand Gates.” All the negatives were returned to me later while I was working in Washington, DC and promptly disappeared. I began looking for it to complete an exhibit in 2002 but could not locate it. Fast forward to 2009. While looking through a large plastic tub of prints and negatives I came across an old manilla envelope with quite a few old negatives in it. Low and behold, these were the negatives I had sent to St. Mary’s College more than 40 years ago and here was this prized negative from which I had never made a good print. I was delighted with my find. So here it is, my “new” photo of the week!

PS: I am still searching for two negatives of scenes taken around 1968 at Sausalito Harbor near San Francisco, Ca., of two men working on an old wood fishing boat. I did make a good print of each one of those negatives. A friend of mine in Missouri has one, and I have the other. When I do find those negatives, one will appear here.