[Leica] re: how to appreciate the lousy photos of others (Kyle Cassidy)

[rpalmier at depaul.edu (bob palmieri)]

Kyle wrote:

> did i ever tell you about the time that eggelston and i went to the 
> amish farmers market together?

Actually, no; and I would have thought that this incident would have 
come up when we were talking about that botched eye surgery that made 
the career of a certain other photographer.

> he was buying goat cheese, by the pound, i have no freaking idea why, 
> but we were in a huge rental car, you could have put a brass band in 
> this thing, some sort of cadillac or somewhat from the 1970's

In fact, he needed a vehicle of this size to contain the copious 
amounts of film it took for him to get those images "just right."  
Also, when there weren't a lot of shopping carts handy he'd just shoot 
snaps of the car.  That's why each fender and quarter panel was a 
different color (ochre, chartreuse, mauve and rose pink, if I recall 
correctly.)

> -- this was back in '85 or '86 and i wasn't sleeping a lot at the 
> time, so it's a bit fuzzy -- anyway, he had all this damn goat cheese, 
> maybe forty or fifty pounds of it. we'd drive down the road, all the 
> while, his mouth is flapping conspiracy theories, UFO's, algier hiss, 
> that kind of stuff, he'd see  a farmers market and slam on the brakes, 
> skid us to the side of the road and leap out demanding freaking goat 
> cheese. "do you have any goat cheese?!" he'd bellow, "i must have the 
> goat cheese!" he'd throw wads of money at them. he didn't even count 
> it anymore.

Doubtless a lasting subliminal aftereffect of having watched the 
curious figure of "Uncle Tonnous (sp??) on all those episodes of "The 
Danny Thomas Show" in the '60's.

>  It had been like this for days, half of the stuff was rancid, it 
> smelled like we had a dead hooker in the trunk. he wanted!

And your intimate knowledge of deceased proximate prostitutes comes 
from...???

>   to take all this goat cheese to Estes Kefauver's house -- give it to 
> him with this crudely drawn birthday card he'd made back when we were 
> staying in SoHo

Sleepless in Soho; I imagine this was a common condition during that 
era for you Artise-type guys.  In fact, the ensuing delirium could well 
be responsible for Eggie's forgetting the fact that Kefauver died in 
1963.

> . we'd be going flat out through these backwater highways, blasting 
> past buggies at 110, 115 miles an hour, the horses would go mad as we 
> whipped past, the shock wave from just the air must have been 
> incredible, but eggelston -- that was hardly enough for his psychotic 
> mind, he'd always lay on the horn, BRAAAAP! and the horse would fly up 
> into the air and before you could see the buggy completely tip over in 
> the rear view, we were so far down the road it would have been 
> impossible without binoculars anyway.

To his credit, he kept all the snapshots of these incidents in his 
personal collection, out of the public eye.

> the point of this story is that eggelston had a camera around his 
> neck, it was a nikon FE with a motor drive, he had the thing around 
> his neck like Flav-a-Flave, wore it everywhere, with this crazy radio 
> reciever attached to the top of it -- some rube goldberg device they 
> made for him up at MIT, it looked like an alarm!
>   clock hidden in a loaf of bread. Anyway, there was this girl in Des M
> oins -- I can hardly call her a girl, she was about 45, but anyway, 
> she was in an iron lung and had been since she was like 3 or 4, and 
> all she ever did was stare up at the ceiling and watch "the price is 
> right". she could move one finger, just one. and eggelston had given 
> her this box with a radio antenna, and when she pushed that button, 
> wherever he was in the country, that camera would go off. KACHING! and 
> take a picture of whatever was in front of egg.

In fact, she wasn't the only one with a transmitter.

> it was the darndest thing i ever saw. but that's how we got his 
> portfolio together. when we finally made it to Burnt Church, 
> Tennissee, we had all the film developed and sorted by a gorilla at 
> the zoo there and sent back to his agent. Wait, his agent might have 
> been the gorilla, like i said, this is all a bit hazy ---

Did you happen to notice that little antenna outside of the cage?


Bob Palmieri