One of the many nice side effects of attending the New York Photo Festival was to run into some people whose blogs I was very familiar with. Bloggers are often accused of being too self-referential (which might strike some as a somewhat curious accusation, given the context of the art world), but it is now a pretty simple fact that the network of bloggers has created an extremely lively (see Andrew and Michael above!), diverse, and, yes, democratic community - and I still hope that the spark will finally ignite the same kind of fire (read: passion) in those parts of the world that hasn’t quite learned what is to be gained from blogs.

It’s unlikely that memory will serve me properly, and unlike the busiest man in the blogopshere during the Festival, Andrew Hetherington, I did not write down the names of people I met. So I’ll have to rely on the old gray matter - my apologies to those missed here. People I did meet, many for the very first time, were (in no particular order) Andrew, of course (that man was just everywhere), and Michael, Chase (pictured above with me), Cara, Harlan, Ofer, Shane, Will, and Robert.

And then there were the many other people who’d walk up to me, introduce themselves and tell me how much they liked the blog. Even though I had shamelessly posted my own face on this blog recently, I didn’t really anticipate someone actually recognizing me. So I was more than surprised and extremely happy to hear from so many people that they enjoy this blog. Seriously, that has made all the hard work worthwhile. Thanks for coming to meet me!