About a week and a half ago a friend gave me a really awesome book called "the other city". It's a thin hardcover from 1969 that features the photography and words of four teenage boys living in Brooklyn. The book was derived from a highschool photo project in which kids were given instamatic cameras and set loose to capture their lives and neighbourhoods. These four boys took it one step further so their teacher put this book together and assembled short captions with each photo taken from interviews with the boys and some writing they had done during the school year.

The photos themselves are terrific but the text is what makes it so great. The words are really straightforward and honest, in that way kids sometimes are. My favourite photo is from the "People" section. It depicts a young teenager standing in the hallway of a darkened house with his face pressed up against the glass of a door. His reflection shows in the glass. The text reads:

"When you grow up you get tired of a lot of the street games. They don't seem as much fun as they used to."