My eldest son, Eoin (aka Axial Hence) and I are embarking on a project together. He is a writer. He's on a gap year editing a book before starting university to study English and Creative Writing later in '21.
Over the decades I have been making photographs that often feature a bloke who appears to have been following me around the world, sneaking into my pictures from time to time. I don't know what he's all about but Eoin has some ideas.
This is the fist picture he has riffed on but there are several more. I will feature them here over time mixed in with my instructional posts on photobook making.
Photograph © Paul Treacy / Millennium Images 2001
Story © Eoin Treacy
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, and the night is young.
In the cold midst of Manhattan: you stop on the late-evening wander, coming across the gargantuan puddle - or portal maybe - where Central Park South has failed to rid its misshapen self of the autumn raining insomnia.
There's no hurry on your part. You recall that you preferred to stay and marvel at the alternate reality facing you, wherein, not unlike our own, the Plaza Hotel infinitely fades into the black sky.
Though the curiosity is there (it always is) the reflection is somehow too menacing for you to come closer, and find the vanishing point where the tower may disappear. The feeling is suddenly that you long for the warmth of your apartment - a mere fifteen minutes away on the subway - and you look up, back into the real world, to cross the tired street.
Then you see him.
Does he approach you, particularly? Why have the feeling that you're the target, or receiver of his dreaded sable suitcase? You don't stay to find out, wary of the portal.
Crossing the road. Going back, although it's the same direction he's headed. The picture you couldn't help making is the last you see of him.
But only for that night.
There are several more of these to come. I hope you'll be back. Please bring some friends and colleagues.
Comments are more than welcome. As is coffee.
Thank you for your time.