by Thomas Good

Because Metaphors Can Be Lethal

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"Why The Living Theatre is returning to New York"
16 Reasons In Black and White

There are 97 reasons that come to mind and many more that annotate the page. I heard Judith Malina read the 97 aloud at a conference of the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) in New York on February 17, 2007. The poem she read was written by Hanon Reznikov and can be found here. I have illustrated 16 of the reasons that glued themselves to my sensorium. They seem to answer a question I hear fairly often in the digital age: "why do you shoot black and white, why 35 mm?" My favourite answer: because metaphors can be lethal. There are 15 more listed below. Feel free to rearrange the captions as you like as I'm certain you could a better job than I did.

because there isn't a lot of time left

because the earth is about to shake off the human species like a bad cold

because of the little paper cup of coleslaw they serve with the sandwich

because no man is an island but Manhattan is

because nobody should be president

because some knuckleheads keep giving anarchists a bad name

because midtown needs a not-so-temporary autonomous zone

because the revolution isn't a movie that was shown in 1968

because the beautiful nonviolent anarchist revolution needs a new york chapter

because the whole thing is a dance

because satan is lurking in every invoice

because Staten Island is another matter

because women have almost figured it out

because in heaven they teach you to gamble

because metaphors can be lethal

because we're all dying to make a living

Camera: Nikkormat FTN Model I (1967), Lens: Nikon Nikkor-S Auto f/1.4 50mm (1971)