Huancayo, Peru 1973

Ed Grazda snapped this photograph, "Huancayo, Peru," and I love the hats, I want one! I can imagine being there with Ed, peeking in at all those beautiful shapes. Some dark, some light, all hanging in an open-air market. I want to touch the felt, feel the different weights of the hats, try one on. I can imagine Ed, moving slowly, thinking about how to capture the light, the geometry, the whole scene. It makes me think about how we all see the world in our own way. Ed saw this, and made it into a picture for us. A picture filled with such geometric and material curiosity. It’s like a still life, but with hats instead of fruit, or bottles. And it's not just a picture of hats, it's a picture about seeing. And feeling. Maybe we are all hat makers, in a way, shaping the world with our own eyes.