most of us feel broken in some way. often this feeling is quiet and unseen, but even if we don’t admit it, even if it’s invisible, even if we’re totally wrong, in many of us there’s something that feels a bit incomplete. i don’t think this is bad. i think it builds character. it makes us strive for the things we need, even if we don’t really know what we need. it makes us look for the things that are broken in others and it brings us the capacity for compassion and empathy.

most of the time people feel incomplete in ways that would never occur to anyone but themselves, ways that would remain invisible (i.e., you feel unloved, you feel awkward, you feel clumsy). but sometimes there are very real physical manifestations. when something feels missing because it actually is missing, when it is plain to the world that something is missing, it can be a lot harder. most of us have only our own neuroses to contend with. when you have to contend with the questions and stares and reactions of strangers, that’s another thing entirely.

stefan knauss is a prosthetist. in the simplest terms he helps people to feel less broken, less incomplete. he builds artificial limbs; legs, arms, hands, feet, fingers, ears and eyes with such a degree of precision and beauty and accuracy that when i looked through his portfolio half the time i pegged the real leg for the fake one. stefan brings artfulness and dignity to us when we need it most. his work is equal parts function, art and compassion.

he made his first mechanical hand for a high school science fair twenty five years ago. it’s the one on the left (obviously) in the first picture above. to me that picture represents twenty five years of single minded effort, of striving to complete what feels incomplete.

while i was at stefan’s i met leslie. leslie lost her left leg to cancer eight years ago. some time later stefan made her a new one. after years of wearing long pants and boots to cover up the obvious prosethetic she used to have, leslie now wears skirts and sandals frequently. a casual observer would never know. even though the fact of being able to wear skirts and sandals might seem trivial, the result is huge. sometimes it’s a luxury to be able to keep to ourselves the things that feel broken.

today, october 14th, is the birthday of my friend and artist-extraordinaire, marshall arisman. happy birthday, marshall!

everyone do yourself a favor and go look at marshall’s work here.

i met dana in the summer of 2001, at a party at peter gilstrap’s house. it was a fluke that i was even at this party, i really try to avoid parties as much as i can. when i do have to go to a party i generally stand in the corner and read the person’s books, or stand in the kitchen and try to help cook something. anything to avoid talking to the inebriated. anyway, dana was standing in the kitchen, too. at the time dana worked as the associate art director of the LA weekly. i gave him my card, and he passed it along to debra, the photo editor. through debra, i met bill, and through bill i met dave. so, peter, dana, debra, bill and dave. five good, solid, talented, smart people. from one party. i guess it sometimes pays to go to parties.

dana then became the art director of LA citybeat, which just went belly up a couple weeks ago, sadly. they paid horribly and  had a bad habit of assigning things at 5pm on a friday that were due on the following monday. honestly, sometimes we’d just avoid answering the phone late on a friday afternoon so our weekend wouldn’t be ruined. all that being said, i really enjoyed working for citybeat – the subjects were often great, and dana’s layouts were always stellar. i started my career working for alt-newsweeklies, they’ve always been good to me, and i’ve always appreciated the experience.

dana was kind enough to make me a groomsman at his wedding a couple years ago, and it wasn’t even a trick to get me to take pictures. that’s the mark of a decent guy, right there. dana also used to live with a possum. or, near a possum. he also, at one point, had a pot bellied pig named “bacon”, but sadly that was in a different state.

dana was smart and got out of citybeat before the publishing trouble really hit. he decided he wanted to really learn how to draw, even though by anyone’s estimation he was already a tremendous illustrator. so he enrolled in art center, and now he’s working his ass off, beating the pants off the young kids there who think they’re hot shit. shhh, dana. don’t tell anyone you’re an art director.

dana was over at my house printing his final project for school on my printer. despite what the picture below looks like, he and milo really got along famously. no milo was injured in the making of these photographs.

see dana’s stuff here.

dana’s good people. you should all hire him to illustrate and design things. except when you should be hiring a photographer, that is. then you should call me.

during an impromptu, last minute, non-photo-related trip to new york last week, i managed to sneak away a moment to visit marshall in his studio. always a good idea. if you don’t know marshall arisman, you really should take a moment to check out his website. marshall is the chair of the graduate illustration-as-visual-essay department at the school of visual arts.

below a short (really short) video, just for fun. audio stolen from a CD of stories marshall recorded – also having the best radio voice in the world.

i just got a note from marshall’s wife, dee, saying that these are the only photos of him ever taken where he’s smoking. whoops, sorry about that. she also says he’s about to quit. well, okay. . .cut back. these shots were taken out on the street in front of his studio, in chelsea.

thanks, marshall, for always taking a moment to let me visit.

last night was the opening of the starlight foundation’s “indomitable spirit” show at the ACE gallery in los angeles. several months ago i was asked to donate a print from the hearts book to this show, along with about 75 other photographers. the starlight foundation is a charity that benefits seriously ill children, and if you have to give your money to some organization that doesn’t directly benefit me, i recommend taking a look at them.

there were some really great photos in the show, and some really amazing photographers. i got to briefly meet douglas kirkland, who organized the show. thanks to aline smithson for recommending me.

you can see a gallery of the photos in the show at their flickr site here.

i just received an email from my old college saying that the dorm i lived in as a freshman is about to be demolished and rebuilt elsewhere. it’s kind of funny to me that this notice would come on this particular day, july 2nd, because i have very clear memories of that dorm, mostly of the first few weeks of my freshman year. of course, all the freshmen get to school a week or two before everyone else and undergo orientation to ease into being there so that maybe by the time class starts they won’t be so scared out of their minds and confused. those first couple weeks you end up with a lot of 18 year olds walking around nervous as can be, trying to act cool, and that was certainly us.

that first year of college i shared a wall with amy macwilliamson. our dorm rooms were right next to each other, and we hit it off right away. strangely, our room-mates ended up being good friends, too. sometimes i’d knock on the wall and amy would knock back. for some reason this pleased me very much, and i remember feeling that that simple act was an indication to me that i was somewhere else – both in place and in life – and even being as resistant to change as i was, i felt it was a good thing. i won’t embarrass amy and say publicly what i used to call her as a nickname. i will embarrass myself and say that i sometimes still call her that, even all these years later. that first year, after being fast friends for a few weeks, we had a falling out and took a couple years to come back around.

of course, this was all before either of us knew anything about photography, before either of us had ever considered taking a photo class, let alone taking pictures for our lives. in fact, i think we became friends again in the school’s small, poorly equipped darkroom. i was knee deep in trying to figure out how a rolleiflex worked and if i was crazy to be doing any of this, and amy was just starting to make quietly powerful and thoroughly humanistic pictures. while i was busy filling horse feeding troughs with fixer and bolting enlargers to tables trying to make giant prints, getting distracted by the toys and science of it all, amy was there, inadvertently teaching me important lessons: slow down. don’t be so flashy. look at people evenly and quietly. if you want someone to be real in your pictures, be real to them in person.

i always use the word quiet when talking about amy’s pictures. i’ve used it so much in talking to her that it probably annoys her now. but i keep repeating this because a sense of quiet (without being boring or mundane or plain) is such a difficult thing to achieve in a picture, and when it works i find it to be more impactful than almost anything. amy’s so good at this, and i’m jealous every time i see her photos. sometimes i think amy’s photos are like mountain goats songs, or raymond carver stories. that is, they all seem to me to be about that moment in someone’s life when everything has changed, but nothing has happened yet. there’s always a sense in her pictures that something really momentous is just about to happen to these people, and it’s a really beautiful thing.

anyway, today, july 2nd, i learned that the wall we used to knock on is being knocked down, and today, july 2nd, is amy macwilliamson’s birthday. i’m even prouder today to call her my friend than i was many years ago. happy birthday, amy. thanks for being so awesome for so long.