A couple weeks ago I attended the 50th SPE (Society for Photographic Education) conference in Chicago. My old friend from Bennington College, Jeff Curto, was the chair of the event, which was sold out – some 1,600 attendees. Many attendees stayed at the Palmer House, a grand, historic landmark hotel (1871), with its famous Empire Room, a 250-seat venue (supper club) where just about every luminary performed before it closed in the mid-1970s. SPE had its own luminaries. I caught presentations by Mona Kuhn, Olivia Parker, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Richard Misrach. Five days after SPE I looked out my window and thought of Richard Misrach’s series On The Beach and made this photo (and many others like it). No, I was not in Hawaii. But I was on vacation, far from cold Chicago and my own still snowy landscape in CT. And every time I stood on my balcony and looked down on the beach, I thought of Richard Misrach.