I basically began trolling the inner streets of the nation’s capital as a means of playing “hooky” from clerical errands for my father. Particularly around the old Courts complex, ancient, boarded and crumbling brick hovels called out to this photographer to document them before they were to be thrown down in a flurry of masonry and lath debris.
As I roamed almost aimlessly at age 15- 16, I knew nothing, at the time, of Parisian street photographer M. Atget. I was only dimly aware of the beloved eccentric photo-surrealist Clarence Laughlin and his gauze-wrapped mannequins posing in heaps of antebellum rubble.
My photographs do not qualify nor quantify: they merely bring murky drams into crisp realization that all may enjoy- no matter how unschooled in the arts.
So, let us sit down, meet and pore over my visual record of all that is lovely and is now lost!
The Cowboy Poet’s photography was part of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C show “District,” on display at the historic Carnegie Library January 6 – February 27, 2016. More samples can be seen at www.ChrisEarnshaw.com.