The photographs on contact sheet 38 were shot in the autumn of 1975.   I had spent some of my summer's earnings at Monsanto by purchasing a very wide angle lens.  Photos on this contact sheet demonstrate how I was playing with the lens and learning what it did.

I had returned to Cornell College for my sophomore year.  I was living in Altoona Hall, a men’s dormitory that was in a building that started its life as the town’s hotel.  It was halfway between the campus’s eastern border and downtown Mount Vernon.  Each room was a single.  A few of the rooms, the ones on the south-east corner, were suites.  All had sinks and running hot water.  There was one room in the basement, occupied by a student from Louisiana.  He hated tornadoes and thunderstorms.

You had to apply to get into Altoona.  The school referred to it as the Men’s Honors Residence, but there was no honor required for entry or residency other than having been accepted in the first place.  I don’t know that they ever turned anyone down.

The photographs a10 – a12 were of Bob Bridgers, the senior who lived in the second floor suite.  My room was adjacent to the west.  Bob played the electric bass.  I knew that every Thursday, he would plug it in and play from around 8:00 to around 10:00.  He usually played the bass line along with Beatles tunes.  Not only did I get a better appreciation for Paul McCartney’s playing I also got a good lesson in learning how to listen for individual instruments in a band.  Bob left before the end of the semester.  He had some sort of nonconformance to school rules.  I heard the rumors but I lack the evidence to report it here.  Someone in the dorm said that Bob didn’t want us to blame him for everything that had gone wrong in the dorm.  I once stepped out of the shower to find that someone had bent my glasses by twisting the lenses in opposite directions.  I also had a precious bracelet stolen – a gift from my father’s uncle to my father to me.  The open secret of the dorm was that any door could be opened with a bent butter knife and there were bent butter knives hidden in the hallway closets.  Anyone could have done either to me.  No one vandalized or stole from me at Cornell before I moved to Altoona or after Bob left.

Bob shot the fourth photo, of me and Dave Babcock.  Dave lived in the very spacious room at the north-east corner of the dorm, overlooking the farm fields to the north and the Presbyterian church to the east.  Dave was one of my best friends.  We shared interests in photography, music, history, and marijuana.  Our friendship continued until his death in 2010.  You will see a lot of photos of Dave on this website.  This year, I was the editor of the college yearbook and Dave was my photo editor.  The next year, he would be editor and I his photo editor. 

Photo 38a14 is from Bob’s door looking west down the second floor hallway.  38a15 is of Chris Dewey in a dress.  I likely accidentally strolled into his photo shoot with photographer Jeff Courtman.  Chris was running for Homecoming Queen.  Jeff shot promotional photographs for the candidacy.  Chris came close to winning but there were voting irregularities.  Rather than contest the result Chris conceded.  He said that after the previous year’s homecoming queen was criticized for not being the homecoming queen type, he wanted to press the boundary on who was the type for homecoming queen.

I think that 3802 – 05 are of Carol Lindsay.  I remember her to be studious and well spoken.  I would have been interested in knowing her better but I had little interaction with any woman at Cornell other than my fiancé, Janet or her friends. 

3808 through 3811 are portraits I shot for seniors that they could use in the yearbook. 

3814 is a photo of me.  I don’t know who took it.  Who wore low-cut Chuck Taylors?  Maybe Emerson Goodwin.  Maybe Dave Babcock.

3815, 16 and 17 are photos of young women pledging to become members of the Kappa Theta sorority, awaiting dining service.

The rest of the photos on this contact sheet are either self-explanatory or unremarkable.  I publish every frame on every negative except those that are blank or uninterestingly blurry.  Some of the blurry photographs are interesting, like pictures of dreams and 3819.  By showing everything, I also demonstrate what was interesting me then and there.  As you see, I was not interested in collecting creepshots of women.  But there must have been something about the woman in 3823 and 3824.

3820 is some sort of student election.  3823 to the end are miscellaneous photographs of the college campus, including a class held outside under the trees.

The photographs discussed here can be found in the set of galleries called Photographs by Number, under gallery 00038.  This corresponds to the 38^th contact sheet I scanned on this project.  Thank you for your interest.