Fred Ressler

''Liking its abstract beauty, I took a photo of a shadow on the side of my house with a Cannon Sure-Shot camera one of my daughters had given to my wife, Eileen, and me. When I had it printed, I noticed a face. I showed the image to Eileen and she said there was a body too and it looked like an archangel. I was sort of suprised because neither of us was into angels as far as we knew. It sort of rang a bell when she said that. I had the feeling that it might be an angel. I figured, if this showed up by chance, what would be the results if I looked for this type of image. The irony is that I had thought of photographing these eidetic images in clouds, shadows, tree leaves before but never did it. The result gave me the incentive to look for more images.

"The Blues Singer" showed up within ten minutes. I took a shot and called Eileen to show her the shadow on the house siding by our back door. She said shoot, not knowing I already did; I shot again with slightly different results, as the shadows change with wind and time. I realized the grooves in the siding would get in the way, and switched to a 20x30 inch foam board covered with paper and mounted on a homemade stand art. I also took photos inside the house on the floor and walls.

I showed an early photo to Eileen and she said it looked like Dan Doloff, an old friend. When she said this I started realizing these might be something more than random images, but I tried not to dwell on this aspect being content with the intrinsic photos. I showed another photo to my daughter, Lila, to see if someone else saw the face. Her mouth dropped open and she exclaimed "It's me." I said "What?". She said "It looks exactly like me". I saw that she was right and I was totally hooked.