And I have to also highlight here that it's a square format book, which is quite unusual. You don't see a lot of square format books. Well, I didn't know that because the solely book

was square, too. I just like it.

You know, I like everything about it. I was on a podcast, but I was hoping we might try to capture it here in words somehow, highlighting a few of the prints that and their backstories that are in the book and the exhibition. I was hoping maybe we would start with the cover image, water slide in fog, 1979. What made that cover worthy to you? Why is that image so special in your mind? Well, first of all, to choose the cover really is agony because it's such a big decision. And David

Chicky made some samples, covers for me, but then I made some small ones that I think helped me a lot. But I think that photograph is really important to me because it's so strange. And it's sort of the kind of photograph, I don't know if I could ever make again, just because of the geography of where that water slide was, how I was allowed to climb up this sort of dirt pyramid to get to the top because I tried to go back last year and do it, and they wouldn't let me because everybody's afraid of being sued. And then the fact that I really will never really know what that photograph is about, the ideas I had at that time were so serious and dramatic. And I think I had a lot to do with being in workshops where people just beat themselves to death to try to talk about their work that's sort of thumbtacked to the wall. And being with photographers in the 70s that sort of were so angst ridden, and would have such dramatic sort of stories to tell about their photographs or sort of ideas of what they wanted their photographs to be. And what I thought about that narrative was so dramatic that I didn't dare tell anybody. So I always kept that to myself. But now so much time has gone by that I thought, okay, this photograph is a miracle. I mean, I would never be able to make this again. It was where I was standing, what was going on, the fog, the color, the structure. My favorite part about the picture is the right bottom corner that there is a square of grass that absolutely fascinates me. And it is a fascination to me because it is a phenomena that can happen only in the medium of photography, I think. And I'm not going to go more into that. I just want you all to go back to that picture and see if you think I'm crazy in why I was so overwhelmed by that little patch of green grass. I did think that the photograph seemed like the end of the world. It looked like something that might have come out of a movie like the Titanic or Force Ma Jure, that movie, False Ma Jure, which is so wonderful. And the color and the background that I love so much, the fog and the scale and the just fine line between what a little tiny 35 millimeter negative can capture from a photographer that had no idea what they were doing. I mean, it's just a miracle that those little people in the background and the cars are in focus. And the stuff that's happening on the left that happens to be on the back of the book, that to me is another fabulous picture in itself. And I could go on and on, but that's enough about that picture that I love to death.