Editor's Report

A drawing is an autobiographical record of one's discovery of an event - seen, remembered or imagined.

I came across the photo, a black-and-white 3×3 print, in an attempt to clear the clutter, to discard mementos that had collected in the desk. The encounter was a meeting (perhaps confrontation is a better description) between the one who wants to clear away — who willingly participates in the early spring cleaning of accumulated curios — and the one who is fearful of forgetting what these mementos remind me of, whether it be an occasion, a time, an experience. There is a bird feather (which I cannot name and probably never knew, saving myself from the embarrassment of forgetting), the hotel bill marked paid, and the foreign coin of a currency no longer in existence. These things all reside comfortably in the drawer of the desk. Each of these artifacts and the many like them all jog my memory; they are accompanied by a gentle tap on the shoulder or a whispered reminder in my ear of where we first met. Could my mind and its companion memory retain these moments without the objects?

The photograph is a reminder, as Berger once said: “Photography is a process of rendering observation self-conscious” (p. 216). This photograph was a little obscure, not as a result of the failure to carefully focus the lens, nor the mediocre printing service that developed the negative, but because it appeared as if a child had taken it, someone unfamiliar with how to frame a photo and capture enough of the image to invite curiosity or interest in the observer. The objects slated for development in the photo were partial and incomplete; their incompleteness offered little to the viewer as to who the photographer was or what they had in mind. What the photo offered in black-and-white were a few dislocated branches floating above some unattended vegetation — the kind one would see in an unfarmed forest. To the side stood a metal fence, weathered in a way that mad