IrwinFoto

A gallery of photos by Mike Irwin

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  • Z

    Z | Jennings, LA | 2017

    “Scarcely a day of my life has gone by when I’ve not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or pen the letter Z, I still feel a secret tingle, a tiny thrill. Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jackknife ever ready to cut the cords of convention or peel the peach of lust. Z is slick, quick, arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister … If X marks the spot, Z avoids the spot, being too fluid, too cosmopolitan, to remain in one place.”

    — American author Tom Robbins

    (Blogger’s Note: I’m on the road this week and am relying on quotes from artists, authors and scientists to complement my photos.)

  • Steps

    Steps | Seattle, WA | 2017

    “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are (more…)

  • Grain Elevator

    Grain Elevator | Wenatchee, WA | 2017

    “Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It’s geometrically perfect. It’s tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a (more…)

  • Morning Walk

    Morning Walk | Cashmere, WA | 2017

    “For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others. For beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness. And for poise, walk with (more…)

  • Shadows

    Shadows | Spokane, WA | 2018

    On a lark, my Dad suggested that we have our auras cleansed. A poster for a New Orleans voodoo shop had touted “a better life, a better you” after just one incorporeal scrubbing. That night, we sat in folding chairs while a large woman with cascading black hair and 12 inches of cleavage warmed her hands in her armpits. “Hot hands cut through your aura’s sludge like butter,” she explained. Then she told me to lean forward (yep, at least a foot of cleavage) and breathe deeply (vanilla). She held her hands a few millimeters from (more…)

  • Road

    Road | Waterville, WA | 2017

    A man I hardly knew picked me up at 5 a.m. to go cut a Christmas tree. In the freezing dark, we drove into the mountains in a rattletrap four-wheel-drive pickup truck. The back was filled with fresh-cut firewood, so he’d lashed his chainsaw and two shovels to the hood. I’d met him the night before at a bar down the street, and he’d drunkenly insisted that I — new to the Northwest — have a real deep-forest experience. “Don’t think I’ve ever been up this road,” he mumbled, maybe still a bit drunk. “But it’s too damn dark to know.” On hairpin curves, we’d slide (more…)

  • Pole

    Pole | East Wenatchee, WA | 2017

    Every pole has a story. Across the rural West, thousands of lone, isolated poles — fence posts to power poles — stand as mute sentinels to … well, who knows what? Each one’s worldly purpose ranges (I’m guessing) from (more…)

  • Water Glass

    Water Glass | East Wenatchee, WA | 2018

    My two favorite cosmic particles — photons and water molecules — play well together. Water is often at its best when (more…)

  • Exercise Ball

    Exercise Ball | East Wenatchee, WA | 2017

    I’m not even sure how an exercise ball works. Bounce it? Toss it? Roll it? It sits perfect and whole in the gym’s corner, cyclops eye unblinking, surrounded but unaffected by (more…)

  • Angel

    Angel | Spokane, WA | 2018

    Forty-two years ago, before NYC’s Times Square was scrubbed clean of sex and drugs, I was exploring an adjacent alley when I heard footsteps behind me. Deep shadows, high walls, garbage everywhere: The alley was a no-man’s land where only a fool would stroll. But there I was, a stalker’s target, so I picked up my pace and looked for an escape route. Immediately the footsteps sped up, got closer, got louder, until they were right behind me. I felt a tap on my shoulder and whipped around to face my attacker. It was (more…)