[Fall 2023]

Framing the Sequel
Michel Hardy-Vallée

[Excerpt]

I would love to go to the Main for a smoked meat right now, but it’s closed.

I mean: the Main Deli has just closed. It was the one right across the street from Schwartz’s. It served the same kind of sandwiches that are too fat to hold in your hand, but sans tourists. Leonard Cohen preferred the Main, as I did. Probably because there you could always just drop in, eat, and be on your merry way. You didn’t need to subject yourself to lining up at a meat museum, eating underneath the weight of its history, and convincing yourself that this was an epochal lunch, when all you wanted was a medium with fries, a pickle and coleslaw, and a hot pepper.

Well, I suppose that as a historian (of photography, not meat), my line of work is responsible for my predicament: I don’t want people to forget about the past, but I also want them to let it be. Since you can’t eat your smoked meat and have it too, the solution is perhaps to dial down the ritual of veneration…

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES ]
[ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Edward Hillel, Framing the Sequel — Michel Hardy-Vallée ]