Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Benny - June 1990



Benny, sweet Benny. This is from the second photo session I ever had with the little girl. She was a young and still lively ten or eleven years old back then, living with Sherry on Sixty-Ninth Street, 500 square feet in the sky. Who knew then that I was only a few years away from being around with her until the end?

Sherry wanted some nice pictures of her, and this was my favorite of the lot. There are three or four more from this and a later session in July of that year that I want to post here, just as soon as I fire up the scanner and see how well it gets along with my latest version of Photoshop®...

Benny is sitting on a bench in front of the piano, with the television news providing the light in the background. The
embroidery on the bench is by Sherry's Aunt Molly, namesake of our current black cat. This embroidery is now stretched and framed, and hangs on our living room wall. Benny's ashes sit on the bookcase in a hollow ceramic cat sculpture we got in Mexico. I forget who has the piano...



4 comments:

Sharon Kugler said...

Those eyes!
BTW, is that a piano?

Neil J Murphy said...

See new final paragraph.

Anonymous said...

As an occasional Benny sitter, I can attest that she was a very special cat, who enjoyed being the queen of East 69th Street.

Sherry said...

It was Hurricane Jackie's piano...really nice with Queen Anne legs. I thought I was going to practice on 69th street, but the walls were so thin I became very self-conscious. I was never very good.

I figure the last time I tried to play the piano was 1988 or so. But it really looked nice--and even better with Benny on it.