CLASSIC #07

Every so often, somebody will ask me, “How do you choose the cover images?” The question always throws me a bit. It seems to imply a situation where having retired to a quiet room in the office, I sit myself down and then carefully look at around 12 images, comparing, pondering, weighing one against another, and then finally after long and careful consideration, choose an image that I feel is right for the issue.
But no, that’s not the way it works. The cover images just suddenly jump out at me from somewhere, and BAM! hit me in the face. “Here I am! How obvious can I be?” And so it was with the image for this issue’s cover, a 1973 self-portrait by William Gray Harris, made on a 3M Color-in-Color machine.

Harris left the West Coast in 2016, and now lives in a 1 000-year old tower in Sutri, 37 miles north of Rome, and makes photographic views of Italy’s rich architectural heritage. When I call him he tells me, “You know, I always had a feeling that somewhere down the line, somebody was going to take notice of that image, 
and some 50 years later, well, here you are! But I’m a pretty patient guy I guess.”

There are several new articles on The Classic Platform, our online resource, and yes, Denis Pellerin strikes again. We also spill over onto it from the current issue, with more articles on The Hulton Archive and there’s a further interview with Jerry McMillan, about his non-objective abstract photography and shooting the LA art scene in the 1960s and ’70s. And I’ll leave you with an image of the latter.