I graduated from Arizona State University in the fall of 1986
with a BFA specializing in Photography.
One of the projects I developed while in school was a documentation of
student life, with a focus on the social aspects of football games and then the
Greeks. A number of these images were
published in a yearbook documenting the university and at the time I made a
small mockup of a potential book of just my photographs. I have come across these images from time to
time I have been focused on other work.
Over the past couple years I have seen increase in
documentary images from the 1960’s and 1970’s showing up in galleries and
exhibitions. This fact prompted me to
revisit my work from the 1980’s anticipating a pending market and interest for
images from this era. During the process
I found my mockup book as well a book of proof prints. In July I saw a call for entries by the
Phoenix Art Museum for a Self-Published book exhibition and decided to push
forward with producing a book from my photographs taken at ASU.
I had about two weeks to scan images and negatives then edit
and create the book. I decided to use
MyPublisher to create the book because of the deadline. I had to have the book shipped rush delivery directly
Phoenix to make the deadline. Happily
the book was accepted in to the exhibition.
I plan on doing a small printing run of the book now on another self-publishing
site to lower the production cost and get it out to more people.
The title is derived from several things. First, there was the German band Alphaville
who in 1984 released the song “Forever Young”.
Turning 50 last year, has given the song have deeper meaning for me
now. Then there is the fact that many of
these photographs were taken on Alpha Drive, the street which was the
fraternity row at ASU. Finally people in
fraternities and sororities seem to have more bravado, confidence, and energy
than any other group – they are often the Alphas on campus.
Photographs freeze a fraction of a second of history and
preserve things how they were for eternity.
I like that about the medium.
