I went to Spain knowing it was not Mexico, but somehow expecting similarities.

There were few if any.

Spain was unsurprisingly (for anyone but me) a European country. For the first few days I kept thinking, “I’m in Paris, damn it. Where’s the Spain part?” And the Spain part, of course, was the people. 

Not terribly bored, as in Paris, or gregarious, as in Rome. People in Seville have their own unhurried pace. Whoever heard of dinner starting no earlier than 10pm and, more often, at midnight?

I have to tell you a story about my trip. In the images you’ll find disjointed parts of the story.

My first trip to Seville was for an assignment to shoot a shipyard, which in of itself is fascinating since the nearest ocean is 200 miles away.

I was accompanied by Rick Anwyl, the designer and art director who hired me. The first time I met him was at the airport going to Spain. My assistant was Jeffrey Chong and the thing we all had in common was that we all loved to laugh.

Rick, like me, is a collector and like me, his choices are highly personal and often questionable. We accepted his choice on the trip when he found a huge rock he “had to have” as our companion.

He came back from a long walk in the desert with a six-foot-long branch, or as he called it,  “a great stick.”

We managed to get that into the car to join the rock.

When we found wonderful exotic bricks with holes in them, I have to admit they were great and I took one for myself.

But…when we went to a place that sold ceramic chickens and he wouldn't buy any of the hundreds that the sweet old couple had in their shop, but instead “had to have” the one tied to a fence post with barbed wire, Jeffrey and I got a little nervous.

The last straw was when I found this bizarre skeleton of a dog mired in mud and I saw his yearning look and said, “Damn it! No! You are not taking it.” 

He said, “But, Jay, it’s so incredible.”

When flying home we were dying to hear his answer the question from customs, “You got anything to declare?”

“Yeah, a rock, a stick, a brick, and a chicken. They wouldn’t let me have the damn dog skeleton.”

It was a great trip.