We've made a whirlwind dash back home to Canberra to get Heath to camp.  When we go back to Sydney again, this time "we" includes our little Lilac Burmese kitty Maxie, who's finally making the transition to travelling kitty.  I read this evening about another colt who made major money, although this one came as a surprise to me, not from it's breeding but because the amount it sold for.  It was Lot 295, the Fastnet Rock - River Dove colt, and it sold for $4million.  I can understand the Redoute's Choice - Helsinge selling for the price it did.  This one seems pure extravagance though, and makes you wonder whether yesterday's Lot 131 has sent the blood rushing to everyone's head and perhaps the yearling sale prices are now just going to be silly for the rest of this sale. On another subject today I was lead to this.  It's about two of my idols.  One of them is President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  The other is the photographer Jacques Lowe....

For some reason my mind is still swirling on the subject of photographers, their work, and their legacies.  Tonight I am sitting on my own, with my own glass of wine, now that the kids are quiet in bed.  Because my mind has been busy with the subject, I pulled out my Jacques Lowe "Remembering Jack" book, and, on my own, began to re-read the chapter titled "The Lost Negatives" by Thomasina Lowe (Jacque's daughter).   She wrote this: " Countless times I had heard people tell my father where they were when JFK died, their recollections an expression of how deeply they had been affected by their president's death.  Four decades later, two tragic moments in American history intersected for me in a very personal way.  Deep within the rubble of what used to be the World Trade Center sat a safe filled with more than 40,000 negatives of President John F. Kennedy and his family.  Those slips of film were my father's life work, each one a reminder of ...

What is the role, and place, of a photographer in today's society?  What is our legacy?  Does the fire ever really leave the eye of a photographer? Believe it or not the photographer who was my absolute idol had nothing to do with horses.  He was Jacques Lowe, the personal photographer to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his family.  JFK is another idol of mine (and of many).  My parents, who are both academic types and politically astute, had a photobook called "Four Days in November", detailing photographically the events of that terrible day on 22 November 1963.  I remember the book vividly and even at  young age, the  power of these photographs.  It led me to ask my parents about the assassination, and they both had the same comment, that the whole world stopped that day, and that they could remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. It's probably that book which sparked the facsination I develo...