Happy Hog Rot

This story starts in 1973 at Ansel Adams’ Yosemite Workshop.   Here is a photograph, recently rediscovered, I self-timed in one of the cabins where Guy was staying.  He is reclined in the foreground, and I appear in the mirror.

And another.  Guy was mostly shooting 2-1/4 medium format then, and I believe he also used a large format view camera.

The next year I was in New York City and looked up Guy, having recalled that he lived and taught just across the river in New Jersey. I found him in somewhere in lower Manhattan where I took these photographs of him taking a break from his tiny darkroom and later during our walk-around for some street photography.  We also visited with some of his friends in their studios and darkrooms, giving me insight into what it took to exist as a photographer in that city.

After I returned to Los Angeles, Guy sent me a most wonderful photographic Hanukkah/Christmas holiday card , which I regrettably cannot so far recover. It showed Guy and his wife seated and looking directly into the camera, while some activity, apparently unnoticed by them, ensued at their feet: their nearby cat was caught at the moment of the remote shutter’s release with its heads in the jaws of their dog.

I visited Guy and his wife again at a later time when he had just acquired and was restoring/rehabbing a brownstone. So far, I have been unable to locate the negatives from that trip.

Years passed. But in 2016, I once again came upon the above and other photographs of Guy. In January of that year, I made a search of the wilds of the internet, and found a possible, but not conclusive, account for Guy. So I sent out a private Facebook message of inquiry. After months of silence, in May of 2016 a response suddenly emerged, stating simply “I’m that Guy”.