The Hug

The Hug

By request, the background to this picture…

I went to a very “private” private school for the first 11 years of school, until finally I came to a point in 10th grade when I realized that my education as far as academics was stellar, but I knew nothing of the world outside the walls of my school. I decided to transfer to the most extreme opposite school in my town, Northwest School of the Arts… a magnet school on “the other side of the tracks” from where I had lived my entire sheltered existence to that point.

At my private school, I was considered a nerd/outsider because I was an actor and artist instead of a football player. At NW School of the Arts, it came as a huge shock to me that with an empty canvass of history in the eyes of those around you, you can become whatever you want – I became a popularity mecca. Suddenly I was a mainstay in every group from the pill-poppers to the goths, the actors to the preps to the point where I had to spend my 24 minute lunch-break crowd surfing (so to speak) to give every group a bit of my time.

This is Becky I am hugging, and she was one of the first, and most devoted of my gothic friends. I had just designed her a dress for the prom, which was then handed over to one of the fashion design focus students to create for her. Many didn’t think of her as very attractive, but her heart was pure as snow, and I kept that in mind while designing something just perfect for her. I set up my tri-pod to take incremental shots every few seconds when I presented it to her (people just did that kind of thing at my art school) and this was the best of them all by far.

I lost touch with her about a year later, but this remains one of my favorite photographs of all time.

The Hug belongs to the following groups:

! 100% !, A New Aesthetic.... Divine and Otherwise , All Things Poetic, Artistic, Philosophical, Compassion, Courage & Friendship, Core [C.O.R.E], Creative Poetry Challenges, Smiles, Something To Say, The Healing Journey, Underground USA and United States Available for sale as

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