This week my second print edition went on sale at 20x200. The picture is from a great day I spent a few years ago in the Flint Hills town of Strong City, Kansas. Here are a few more pictures from that day.

This week my second print edition went on sale at 20x200. The picture is from a great day I spent a few years ago in the Flint Hills town of Strong City, Kansas. Here are a few more pictures from that day.


SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 2009
10:00 A.M. — PARADE.
Singing of National Anthem – Michael Doue
Homecoming Queens – Amelia Evans & Samantha Cunningham
GRAND MARSHAL – John Cummings to represent all Past Commanders of Lon Helm Jr. Post No. 182 Arma American Legion.
I suddenly feel very exotic, just wish I could read this.
I was reading my favourite blogs, that I frequently read and I came across this amazing american photographer, who portrays landscapes that have this sunny American Way of Life mood, kind of dusty, with fading colours and some sort of nostalgic feeling.
Although it is in Kansas, a state which is more famous for The Wizard of Oz than for beaches, the images of Mike Sinclair could perfectly have been come out of a surf movie from the 60s.
I share them with you so we can cheer up this winter a little bit, which is more londonlike than tropical, and who knows, the sun encourages itself to show up..."

Went to my first fair of the season last weekend.
The Platte County Fair started in 1863 and is the oldest
continuously operating fair west of the Mississippi.
Gayl and I are just back from a few days at Sea Ranch, that preserve of 60's Modernism. If you go make sure to get the caramel rolls at Twofish Bakery. Thanks Mika, Eirik, Isak and Dashiell for a great vacation.






Went out yesterday morning and tried to photograph the old Manchester School at Manchester and Truman Road. It’s been closed for several years, not sure how long. As always seems to happen, even at these abandoned sites, just as I had figured out a position to shoot from and had the camera set up I noticed a guy walking towards me who looked official. I was sure he was going to tell me I couldn't photograph. But he walked right by me, got out his point and shoot camera, and started taking pictures of the gang graffiti all over the front of the building–like I wasn't even there! It was a first. Still, I was so sure he eventually would turn his attention to me that I struck first by engaging him in conversation. I asked about his boots–they looked new–ostrich I think. They were new, he’d gotten them on his last trip to Dallas. I told him I’d just bought some at Kleinschmidt’s, my first pair since I was a kid (I need them for my new Saturday night activity–two-step dancing). He works for the school district and couldn't have cared less about my reasons for taking pictures of the school. We talked for a while–he told me what a big problem graffiti was becoming, what an amazing place the school was on the inside, how the boiler was custom made and even had the name of the school cast into its iron doors.
Kansas City’s parks fill a huge gap between accident and intention — forming the city’s center, void, mysterious plateau and its new normal. These parks wear the pain and joy of the city, its confusion and distress. They come together as much as fall apart, in both senses present.
You can find dirty sex, soaring kites, fountain bathing, plenty of blood, old Cheetos and defunct relationships carved in picnic tables. Interlocking questions swirl about these places — of maintenance, function, community, beauty, income and race. But more pointedly, what is the role of the park in the life of the city? These ponderous, softened places that conceal death and celebrate life are forgotten only to be verdantly reborn, remembered and loved for their tiniest details or landmark trees, are in the game and out of the way, there if we need them and never mind if we don’t, it will all grow back next year anyways.
– HESSE McGRAW