Portraits: Friends and Strangers

Excerpt from the Foreword of Portraits:

"I was one of the curious," Michael Mathers writes, explaining how he came to be in the home of an elderly woman who was reading auras. "Curious," however, just doesn't do him justice, this self-described "visual dog in heat" whose hunger impels him into a Skid Row hotel, has him stepping over a pile of eight-inch rubber penises, draws him to a slaughterhouse, a funeral home, a drag queen ball. Takes him to Fossil, Oregon. And leads him over and again to the homes of his friends. "As is my nature," he writes, "I brought my camera."

© Thomas Farber, 1979