Me and Aaron, we're tight, too

So, despite my extremely negative attitude and nearly reverse jinxing myself, I did get into the Marblehead Arts Association show.

I would have been happy just to get my photo accepted, by the way. So imagine my surprise when it turned out my little pic won best in show. That's me, to the left, feeling very awkward and embarrassed (but also secretly very pleased with myself). And this is the photograph that won the prize:



In her comments, the judge said incredibly nice things about the photo, including--and I am not making this up--that it was like "a contemporary update of work by the 20th century photographer Aaron Siskind."

Holy Crap.

But just before my ego started to get way overinflated, I had this conversation with a woman who also had a photo in the show.

Mean lady: Oh, you're the person who won best in show.
Me: Yes, and I saw you won an honorable mention--congratulations.
ML: Well, I would say congratulations to you, but I don't agree with the judge's decision.
Me: [awkward silence].

Later she came up to me again.

ML: I probably shouldn't have criticized you like that. But I'm not sorry, because that's how I really feel.

She also told me my print should have been bigger, and that it wasn't a "standard" size, and mentioned that she works part-time at CVS and one of the Boston branches has her photographs on the wall. And that she's been published in JPEG magazine. Only instead of pronouncing it Jay-Peg, she pronounced it Juh'pug. I guess it was obvious I didn't know the word juhpug, so she spelled it for me.

Meanwhile, everyone else was really nice to me, and congratulated me even if secretly they were thinking that they were totally ripped off, too. Which is, after all, the socially acceptable way to criticize people in a situation like that--in your head as opposed to out loud.