The View From Here

It was at a Goodwill store in Fairfax, California over 30 years ago. For 40 cents I purchased a Lina I toy camera whose plastic lens and light-leaking proclivities would produce some of the loveliest and quirkiest slices of whatever may have been in front of me. It weighed nothing, it defied the avarice of thieves, and required a couple feet of electrician's tape to stem the myriad ways its construction permitted light to enter its secret chamber. But oh, those foggy highlights, the instant vignetting and the symmetry of its square. It made me want to look at everything as if I were seeing it for the very first time. Suddenly, wherever I might be became a place with a view that called out to be honored. And those images became "The View From Here," a body of work released as one of many books published in honor of the 40th anniversary of Portland, Oregon's Blue Sky Gallery.