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One day in 1996 my travel partner Janet Cinelli and I were bopping around
the streets of Amsterdam looking for trouble -- and we found it.
I was working on my street photography Master's Thesis at Purdue University and
I decided to include the notion of placing black and white lead actors on the
street and surrounding them by the color of a supporting city. So we flew off to
Amsterdam (an equally compelling place in both color and black and white) and
Janet threw on her black and white outfit and we grabbed the black and white
umbrellas and we took a stroll down Leidsestraat. When we were a few blocks from
Leidseplein we ran into this very colorful bill post flurry advertising a club
party and I made an umbrella pose or three of Janet there (with black wooden
Tulips) and we moved on down the street. But a half block away I noticed a
couple of guys walking their black and white dog toward where we came from. So I
turned Janet around, approached the gentlemen, got access to the dog, and then
took the whole black and white cast around the corner, and set up the 1st photo above (top).
And that's where the fun began...
A moment after I made "Amsterdam Umbrella Dog 1", I made
"Amsterdam Umbrella Dog 2". There I was, in the
middle of the brick street, my partner Janet posing with the umbrellas and the
Tulips and the Dog and the girl in her little red dresses, and charging down the
street right toward me (from the right of the picture) came a massive black and
white horse pulling a handsome cab. The clatter of the carriage wheels on the
bricks hurried me along as I made the first image and when the dog stood up and
had a good shake I made the second and was about to step out of the way of the
approaching horse when the dog (typical of Dalmatians I'm told) went hyper at
the commotion of the approaching rumble. First he yanked Janet (who'd wrapped
the leash around her hand) directly toward me and onto the sidewalk and over the
curb, tearing her black hosiery and bruising her knee. Then he yanked the leash
out of her hand as she rolled on the ground, running right out into the street
to my right as the umbrella left Janet's hand and blew past me in the wind to my
left tumbling toward the canal behind me. A street photographer ('tourist')
hesitating to leave the street as a handsome cab approaches is typically seen by
Amsterdam cabbies as a target to speed up for rather then a reason to slow down
in the least for (much less stop for) -- -- -- but two frantic gay men screaming
at and chasing after a stampeding dog plus a rolling black and white woman plus
a tumbling black and white umbrella plus a lingering street photographer was
another matter. The horseman pulled back on the reins and the horse stopped
abruptly about 15 feet from me and about 10 feet from the crossing dog, rising
up on his hind legs and waving his front hooves high in the air above the whole
scene like the hero's horse at the end of a TV western.
I stood there frozen to the same spot I'd taken the photographs
from moments earlier and I worried about the dog who had now lost himself in the
crowd. I worried about the frantic owners who'd kindly lent me their black and
white dog and I worried about the tumbling black and white umbrella (which made
it to the canal and was lost) and about the stressed out black and white horse
and about his now pissed off (beet-red-faced) driver who'd begun yelling at me
in black and white Dutch. But mostly I was so worried about the grounded black
and white model, my lead model who'd just done a bang-up job posing for
me, my travel mate, my partner, my wife Janet --
who'd torn her stockings and skinned her knee in the line of duty for the sake
of art -- I was so concerned about her that I never even got a single shot of that whole absurd happening.
Too worried about the model who I began dating 20 years prior to this writing when she showed up at a Friday the 13th party at my house. I love her more than street photography, world travel, and college basketball put together.
Of all the things I love, I love her best of all.
Happy anniversary baby ...
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