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Allan Douglass Coleman: A Self-Interview (2)

[T]though I keenly appreciated the honor of finding myself among the select few admitted to the SF State program [in creative writing], I didn’t really enjoy the experience, or thrive in that hothouse environment. I hated feeling those other people’s fingerprints all over my work in progress. … [E]ven today I rarely show work in progress, in any form, to anyone — not even my editors. […]

Allan Douglass Coleman: A Self-Interview (1)

One reason I feel free not to let any of this worry me is that I have no affiliations or allegiances within the poetry world, thus no image of myself as a poet of this or that tendency, nothing to maintain in anyone else’s eyes or my own except a level of quality to my output. […]

Latent Image (1968)

This article, the first in a series of columns written for the Village Voice between 1968 and 1973, appeared exactly 50 years ago, in the June 20, 1968 issue of that alt-weekly newspaper, which had already become the model for the emerging national and, indeed, international “alternative press.” With it I hung out my shingle as a photography critic, a rubric that I thereby inaugurated and under which flag I still sail. […]

Time Capsule 1971: Collier’s Encyclopedia Yearbook

Two small items must be appended to this report. First, a Japanese newspaper announced that the waters near Mount Fuji were so polluted that one could develop photographs therein and get recognizable if fuzzy results. And the Allied Impex Corporation, after its success with this item last Christmas, announced that it was again planning to market its Mick-a-Matic — an Instamatic camera built into a large and colorful Mickey Mouse head — during the holiday season. […]

Minor White: “Octave of Prayer” (3)

“Octave of Prayer” represents a man, once a respected and vital teacher and philosopher in photography, coming to believe his own legend and making himself into an institution. This auto-deification is a sad and dangerous turn of events. […]