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Photograph: © Isa Leshko

For a long time I was a photographer in addition to being a writer. Images and words always went hand-in-hand for me, and I found that often photographs influenced how I thought about writing and that often writing influenced how I thought about photography. While I don’t make images of my own anymore with any regularity, I still love visiting museums and galleries and reading art books, and black and white photographs, especially those made with large format cameras and printed in silver gelatin, are still the ones that always grab at my heart.

I was drawn to Isa Leshko‘s images for these reasons, and because her photos are of animals, which of course makes sense, because I am all about animals. But reading Isa’s book Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries, published this past spring by University of Chicago Press, was truly a life-changing experience. Her images made me reconsider how we as people think about aging, and how getting old can feel like a burden, but it is actually quite a gift. Many animals — both human and non-human — never make it to their elderly years.

This essay I wrote inspired by Allowed to Grow Old is up now on Entropy Mag. I hope you read it, and take some time to look at Isa’s images. Her work is transformative.

The post “The Privilege of Old Age” in Entropy Mag appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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In the red of night, I float between places. The neon sign across the street fills my dark room with a sharp scarlet light. I live in a neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen. There’s a bar up the street named Perdition, and a demonic mural on the corner, but it’s only in the middle of a restless night, in the bloodshot glow, that this place feels an inferno, and in those moments, when I can’t sleep, I count the bright stripes on my blinds and listen for horses.

The post Urban Equines appeared first on E.B. Bartels.