GRAHAM COTTEN
Zell’s Bells
Graham Cotten, practicing attorney turned MFA writing scholar, engages the everyday landscape of life in and beyond Ann Arbor through the lens of a 35mm Funsaver (and some from his personal collection).
These are the bodies of two typewriters I am restoring for friends. One was made in Switzerland in the 70s, one in Germany in the 50s. I’ve just put primer on them and I loved how the matte white brought the green and pink (wine glass) into focus. Painting over last week’s newspaper, and it’s about to storm.
I often eat lunch standing over the cutting board or the sink. This is the worst possible way to go about it. However, it uses the least amount of dishes, and we don’t have a dishwasher, or rather, I am the dishwasher.
On Wednesdays she works the evening shift.
stoop light
my writing desk (from outside)
Reality, but doesn’t “show” music.
It was so empty throughout the whole neighborhood, Sunday night; I saw one dogwalker, then another- no the same one I realized.
My street corner. The school in the background. I hear the announcements over the PA from my porch.
Basketball goals
Light on my bedroom wall. Source: the reflection off the plastic binding on the dust jacket of a book.
Our den from the spot where Lewis kills chipmunks/bunnies/rabbits and eats them (or not)
*And a few captured with cameras from Graham’s personal collection, including his dad’s old Canon AE-1, Mamiya 6, Canon Sure Shot, and Rolleiflex.
Graham Cotten is a Helen Zell Fellow in fiction at the University of Michigan’s MFA program. He is working on a novel about a Christian high school’s production of the play The Diary of Anne Frank. Next spring he is returning to his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, where his wife is opening a bookstore. You can see (and even purchase!) the typewriters he hand-paints and restores on his Etsy shop, The Typewriter Forest.