This two emails really touched me.
“I bought the book last week, and I just wanted to let you know that I think you did a really nice job. The photos look great. I often see work by photographers on the underclass, on the outcasts of society that treats the people in the images as foreign or exotic — sometimes reduced to objects. Being from Fall River, maybe I’m overly sensitive to this approach, but that never comes across in your work. There’s a real humanity here. With respect to your main theme, someone could walk down a neighborhood of the kind that’s abundant in a place like Fall River, see these boys, and just see thugs. What they don’t see is that the tattoos, the clothes, the smirks are often masks for deeper insecurities. They’re trying to be men, but a lot of them just don’t know how. I think you’ve captured that.”
-Kyle Marum
“I just found out about your book from my roommate. I just want to let you know that the book looks amazing. Me myself a 19 year old born and raised in the riv could totally relate to the photos, shit I grew up with a lot of those kids. I could name a bunch of them, a couple I am actually good friends with. Those photos bring me back to the days, a couple years ago walking in the rain to work after school. Ice cold, totally gives outsiders a view of life in Fall River.”
- Ellis Rua
