Camera Obscura
Joseph Mills doesn't do things halfway. That explains his photography, his personal relationships, and his giant pumpkins.
Cover Story
The disaffected have certain ceremonies, and the black man in the fur coat is celebrating his own private Fourth of July. In public, mind youin front of a Florsheim shoe store somewhere in downtown Washington, to be exact. In one hand he holds a long black umbrella; in the other, a small American flag. Who knows? Maybe it is the Fourth of Julybut if so, he's drastically overdressed for the weather, as is apparent from the people passing by him in shirtsleeves. He holds various posesarms outstretched, arms held straight out in front of himthat give you the impression he's semaphoring to a ship only he can see.
We've all seen himor at least someone like him. If you've lived in the city for a while, you've undoubtedly seen hundreds of his type. But usually not like thisnot on the walls of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, his haunting sojourn on that anonymous Washington street corner caught forever by photographer Joseph Mills, who has done as remarkable a job of capturing spiritual pain on film as anyone since Robert Frank.
With his neat ponytail and glasses, Mills, 51, looks like your typical mild-mannered liberal-arts professor, not a man who spent much of the '80s on the streets photographing the District's psychic casualties because, he says, "I was hurting so bad mentally and I was looking for people who were in the same space as I was. Those people were all mirrors for me at the time."... Continued
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