For the past four decades, in my down time from days as documentary-film road warrior (including a year on staff with the four original journalistic titans of 60 minutes) and a second career as a creative writing teacher in an inner-city high school, and now full time, I have been fortunate enough to spend my happiest hours roaming through a mythical realm I call The Basset Domain with my beloved hounds: Bioan, Boan, Boanis and, now, Bynis - photographing their adventures.
Bathed in the palpably-golden and softly diffused light of the late afternoon, evening and twilight, unadulterated by the foibles or sins of humanity, we have shared countless moments of ephemeral natural beauty and artless encounters with other canine characters we have met along the way. The timeless, luminous simplicity of this, our own, lost domain in a land without name has been an enchanting refuge straight out of an impressionist landscape tinged with an afterglow of the purity of Vermeer.
Since the sudden arrival of this new age of the Covid 19 Pandemic, in all of its hand-wiping sheltering in place away from anyone and everyone else, I began envisioning a safe, clean way to send a little cheer to all the friends and loved ones from whom we must stay separated. Reflecting upon the aura of the countless "Kodak Moments" from our mythical domain, I realized that as the "every man" of the canine world, the Basset Hound has been a staple of the printed greeting card for as long as I can remember. And I understood why most people, the majority of whom have never met one in person, are so beguiled by them: besides being incredibly amusing to look at they are impossible not to love. Sent as E-Cards the only thing contagious about this kind of social intimacy would be all the love that is within them.
What else could you ask for in a greeting card - especially one that glows like a film slide from the glass of any screen in the realm of modern technology and can be sent anywhere in the world in an instant? Begun in the inimitable hues of as yet untransferred Kodak chromes and carried on here in digital, camera-raw files, this fine-art photography, with Kindle books on the way, is all there is to know and be known about it all.
1980
Bioan
1992
Boan
2006
Boanis
2018
Bynis
