Bernard Gillet is a Sweetheart of a Man

I didn't realize I had mail waiting for me in my Flickr account and missed this lovely gift-offering from one of my favorite living photographers!

Bonjour Bill,

Un grand merci pour ton article élogieux sur mon travail dans ton blog "joebrainardspajamas". Je suis vraiment désolé de te répondre si tardivement, mais pour me faire pardonner je t'offre un tirage d'une de mes images, tu n'a qu'a choisir une et me fournir ton adresse postale et je vous l'envoie par courrier.

Now I have the pleasure of going and choosing one of his photographs to have mailed to me.

This will be hard since I love so many of his.

You can check them out on his Flickr here.

There were hundreds I could have selected and with which I would have been quite happy.

I decided to go with Dendron, one of several photos of Gillet's that bear that title.

The real shock was that I thought I had seen all his photos on Flickr, and when I went way back to his earliest postings I discovered an amazing series of monochromatic white portraits with all sorts of textural manipulations (striations, blisterings, decay) that were just stellar.

But I went with one of his more recent, much more palimpsestic photos.

Here's the one I chose.

If you look too quickly at that palimpsest, you will miss all the portraits hidden within it.