Click here to purchase a book or print

Letter Never Sent – Statement

When I was seventeen I wrote down a list of questions to my former best friend, who was then attending a different school. It was a list of inquiries going on for multiple pages. I asked him if he remembered all the things we did when we were little, such as cutting down trees for fires we never burned. I could not bring myself to mail it to him right then and it only became more difficult as time passed.

In 2008 I drove to Florida to help Charlotte Lee develop film her father, Bud, shot but never processed. Each night Charlotte and I would sit on the edge of her tub, talking in the dark while we developed film her dad exposed over a period of nearly thirty years. One night I was thinking about things in life that had been started, yet not realized. I mentioned the letter I had written but never sent. Charlotte’s voice lit up as she replied that she too had letters she had never mailed.

Most of the photographs in this book were made while visiting Charlotte’s house by the gulf coast in Florida, although a few were made in Georgia and Louisiana. Thanks for posing, Charlotte. Macon York helped identify the wooden letterpress type Jay Gould brought down from Minnesota. Jim Sherraden at Hatch Show Print has provided much guidance in person and over the phone. Thanks, Betsy Williamson, for encouraging me to make this book.

On the back cover of the book is this line from the letter, “Do you remember the trees we cut down for fires we never burned?”

This first hardcover edition of Letter Never Sent is limited to 25 copies. A soft cover edition of 12 copies and 1 artist’s proof preceded this hardcover edition. The images and text are inkjet and Laserjet printed on 50lb., double-sided, matte, Red River paper. Ruben is the title’s typeface. The covers are cotton rag paper handmade at the University of Georgia’s Green Street Press. The cover text was printed on an etching press at Louisiana Tech University using a polymer plate produced by Boxcar Press.

“Letter Never Sent” is included in the rare book collection at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the Texas Woman’s University, Department of Visual Arts and the Blagg-Huey Library, Woman’s Collection, Texas Woman’s University, Denton in Texas.

Click here to purchase a book or print