Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

I was going someplace important



I started out going someplace important over in Maryland to do something important and then I saw that dirt road and Vivaldi’s Four Season came on the radio and I decided it was all a sign for me to go for a ride and shoot pictures.


Those old houses. When I go to the art galleries at the Smithsonian I look for a work of art that has balance and good colors and tells me a story and leaves me room to make up a story, which may have been what the artist wanted. For me it’s the same thing in shooting these old, decrepit places….battered might be a better word, although both words means the same thing.






These houses can be beautiful in all their disarray and they tell a story and they leave me endless room to put a story to it, to ask questions, like what happened here? Where did the people go and why did they go there? Of course, the other option is to just drive past this places and see nothing, what a horrible existence that must be.










See that photo of the wide blue sky? I’ve trained myself to every now and again stop the car, get out from behind the wheel and look at scenes like that. I have this fear that if I don’t do that I’ll start taking those wonderful scenes for granted and eventually I won’t see them at all. I look at these displays by God and I say out loud “Look at that!” I have spent so much of my life looking at things and places and people that don't matter. To stop and look at something I want to see is a gift.

I took a picture of that stream because I grew up on rivers, the Mad River in Waterbury, the Naugatuck in Ansonia, the Connecticut River. I've lived nearby the Potomac for three decades. The ancient Celts believed that rivers had their own souls, of course the ancient Celts drank a lot so that explains some of it, but isn’t it a wonderful notion?

See that cow? I came across him on my way home. I’ve been snapping his picture for four years now and he’s always in the same goddamn place with the same expression like “Do I know you?”

See that horse with the white stripe down the middle of his face? I know horses can’t smile but….actually I don’t that. I don’t know anything about horses except they eat hay and sleep standing up and they scare me a little, so maybe he is smiling.