Colburn 

Richard Colburn 
The Scandinavians, 2009
Archivally processed, toned, silver gelatin print
Selection: My Shadow Below Me

In reading James Hearst’s poems, essays, and biography I was drawn to the story of his life. In My Shadow Below Me he wrote of his acceptance of the fact that he would never fully recover from his accident. “I dropped the pretense I had clung to so desperately that someday I would walk away a sound man.” Along with that acceptance was his realization that he needed to educate himself. He established for himself what he described as a “reading program.” “I formed the habit of concentrating on the books of one country. I began with the Scandinavians.”


open book, colburn 2009
Later in the same chapter he wrote of the importance of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class as instrumental in forming his own political philosophy. Those references became the basis for this photograph.

Richard Colburn