Bloody Hell

I've photographed in some pretty fetid places in the past. Out door fish markets in South East Asia with open sewage and 100 degree temperatures. Chicken coops in the dead of summer, ripe barns, fields full of manure, and dark, humid cellars draped with curing ham hocks hanging from hooks. But Friday's assignment takes the cake. Especially if that cake was made from aged beef. I had the pleasure of making a portrait in a wholesale meat purveyor. It had the tiled look and feel of a 19th century sanatorium. Complete with the perfume of aging flesh and blood splattered walls. The floor was surfaced with a quarter inch of greasy brown water spotted with generous chunks of flesh, fat and bone. Later that afternoon a dog on the street stopped while walking past me and began to lick and gnaw on my boots.