Contact sheet 55 is another set of mismatched negative strips from different rolls of film and different situations.

The first set of photos, with “a” in the file name, is from the first major snowfall my freshman year at Cornell College.  I had not yet fallen in love with Janet Paige (Kuller).  I had not yet moved into Altoona Hall.  I was only beginning to form the circle of friends that carried me through college.  I felt alone and adrift.  But I always loved the first deep snow of the year.  It was always magical.  

By November of 1974 I had already felt that Muscatine was behind me.  Yes, my parents and sister still lived there.  I went home for college breaks.  I anticipated returning for a summer job.  But I felt that wherever I was going, it was away from Muscatine.

I did see a pattern re-emerging at college that I had had in Muscatine and it first appeared during my freshman orientation period.  There was a freshman mixer dance.  I asked three different young women if they would want to accompany me.  All three declined.  At the time I thought that they thought that they could do better, sight unseen, with any other person at that dance.  I now realize that the purpose of the dance was to meet multiple people, not just the person you came in with.  In the first few months of college I met several interesting people, several interesting women.  But when it came to asking anyone out, I was not a hot ticket item.  I remember asking out Kennedy Cabell, a younger than normal freshman from Alabama.  We did not engage well.  Once my parents asked me if I’d like to bring someone down with me to meet them in Iowa City for a fancy dinner.  I asked Paige Peterson, an interesting woman from the women’s dorm, Pauley, that was attached to my men’s dorm, Rorem.  It was an interesting time only looking back on the experience.  Who in their right mind would ask, or accept, a first date meeting the parents?  That was our only date.  She was a nice person, but we were different from each other.  

And then there was Lisa.  Zimmerman?  I’m sure I’ll recall her name.  She was the woman whom I spent a few non-date evenings hanging out after dinner or going to an art show.  One evening I walked her back to her dorm room in the Pfeiffer basement and we kissed as we parted company.  I didn’t see her around for a few days so I asked her roommate, Kristine Diekman, about her.  Kristine said that she was engaged to a home town honey and had abruptly left college to return to him.

So by the time I took these photos I had decided that I was going to be as alone, romantically, as I had been in Muscatine.  

The photos with “b” in the file name were taken in the summer of 1972 that I spent with my aunt and uncle Sandy and Phil Weston on the north coast of Wisconsin.  They were very gracious to host me for a few months.  Phil was quite involved in getting me on a good first track in photography.  I roamed around, shooting photographs of what interested me, and developed them in the darkroom Phil had made in a closet of their rental house in Washburn.  I was fascinated with the derelict from the beginning.  I was interested in things that were old and probably weren't long for the world.  I didn’t know then that most things are not long for the world.  I ignored the mundane, the things and people I saw every day.  If I could go back in time and change my photography in the past, I would suggest to myself to shoot photos of those trivial things and places and people that were always there because they would be gone too soon.

The photos with ‘d” in the file name were taken on Sjaeland in Denmark.  A few photos near Kronberg Castle, a few photos from the Danish Technical Museum.

The final set of photos were in and around Mount Vernon and Cornell College, maybe around winter of 1975-76.  Doug Henke in one photo, and Grant Price in the another.  Both became physicians.  And more photos of textural abstract still lifes.  A pretty normal set of views from my stilll life in the 1970s.

The photos referenced in this essay can be seen in the "Photos By Number" section in gallery 00055.