I've been thinking about barns lately. I don't know why. None of my people were farmers, at least as far back as great-great anythings. I took my favorite barn photograph when I was still in high school. It was the side of an old barn, recently painted white, with a rooster in the only window. My father remembers this photography in color with the white barn and a red roost. When I left photography, I did not keep track of my negatives. Now all that is left is a poorly made print I made on RC paper. It is, and was, in black and white. Good black and white photographs can make you think you are seeing colors,

I was recently at an antique mall. One of the booths featured items made from old, weathered barn boards. In the center of the booth as a color photograph of the aging, leaning barn just before it was dismantled to make picture frames, end tables, some faux-folk art Adirondack-style chairs. All of them shitty. They should have burned the barn and saved it from such indignity.

I named this shot Barley House because the word barn is from the Old English, meaning barley house. It is interesting that today barn has two main meanings. One is "A large farm building used for storing grain, hay, or straw or for housing livestock." The other is much more interesting and yet somehow related, "A unit of area...used especially in particle physics."

Finally, I'm not a big DeLillo fan, but I am fond of this: “What was the barn like before it was photographed?' he said. 'What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now.”-- White Noise