My First Photo Purchase

I've been buying photography books since the '70s; it's not a huge collection by any means, but fairly respectable nonetheless. Save for the occasional flea market snapshot purchase, I've never purchased original photography, I could just never afford it. Yes, I've known about 20x200. Yes, I know they have many beautiful prints at very affordable prices, but I save the little I have for the aforementioned books- besides my wife has every square inch of the walls in our humble abode completely filled with all her uhmm... stuff.

So what made me bite on this one?

1) It's beautiful.
2) The price is definitely right.

3) The content- This placid, suburban scenario is knee deep in this country's less than prideful history. Decades, centuries of abuse and degradation all conveniently hidden (and proudly displayed) in plain sight on a simple street sign in a comfortable, middle class neighborhood on a neatly manicured lawn. A photograph that will speak to me each and every time I look at it, both for all the things I see in it- and for all it can't possibly show... And you just don't get all that extra added value in the vast majority of today's "fine art" (color) photography.

4) It's one damn great photo I sure wish I had taken.

So it's with great anticipation that I await the arrival of my very first original photographic print acquisition by Michael David Murphy.