Streets of downtown D.C. through the lenses of ,
Chris Earnshaw: Billy Luck’s Downtown
Joseph Mills: Inner City
The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Carnegie Library, 801 K St NW, Washington, DC 20001
When I encounter decay, I have tried extremely hard, to bring out the underlying beauty, however faint, in the wreck at hand. It was quite amazing that I could 'lose myself' that way and still return to a qualified version of reality. Chris Earnshaw
This is "the edge of horror and beauty." Earnshaw's world was outside of himself, where mine was internal. One could just as well have read the book title as possessive, Joseph Mills' Inner City, for that was the world I was lost in, locked in, unable to exit, attempting then, only to find the company of like lost souls. All this having very little to do with the city itself.
Not until decades past, and one witnessed the moulting of the DC's scared facade, and the healing of those scares internal, that the images became "important" as documents of that which is external.
Someone said, "the eye sees better then the mind." For both Chris and I, it has taken a very long time to recognize that which our eyes had already known many years ago, having to mature deeply, in order to see the marvels our eyes had already captured when we were so young.
I shun the limelight rather than seek it...getting recognition is not really something that matters much anymore. C.E.
Anonimity, the artist's best friend. Think of Kafka, Van Gogh, and Earnshaw's mentor Atget, and Earnshaw himself. It is certainly no coincedence that their purity of heart and soul, that will eternally emanate from their work, walked hand-in-hand with that closest of companions.
TEXT BY JOSEPH MILLS