i’m the elusive angry ex whose words are on display at the gallery you wrote about last week (Show & Tell, “Mad About You,” 2/9). What a saga this has turned into!
I want to thank you for attempting to locate me and for writing the only balanced article about this whole thing. I see that gallery owner Catriona Fraser is using this all as a publicity stunt, so if it’s come to that, I’d like to at least get my two cents in.
I’d like to start by saying that after this whole thing began and I wrote e-mails addressing legality to Ms. Fraser, she prominently displayed those e-mails in the gallery along with my full name and e-mail address. This can be confirmed by anyone who attended the opening, or feel free to ask Ms. Fraser herself. So any attempt to “protect my anonymity” is in fact a blatant lie.
I don’t want money, and I don’t want a lawsuit. I’m aware that I have no case. I want those pictures down. Or, if my words are going to be exploited, I’d like a voice. Enough people know who I am that I’ve received e-mail after e-mail telling me that I’m being publicly humiliated. Doug Sanford chose my most simplistic words so that a small newspaper in Falls Church has called the “ex-girlfriend” “single-minded” and “blind.”
Mr. Sanford is wrong; I am not attached to those words. If anything, I’m ashamed of having even consorted with him after the breakup. Those photographs are a cruel betrayal on top of the myriad of betrayals Doug Sanford committed against me. Without getting into details, rest assured, every word in those e-mails was deserved. You can’t begin to imagine what this man has put me through, and now the train wreck is all on a public stage. I just pray that it doesn’t escalate beyond this letter.
The fact that people are considering this art is laughable. A friend put it perfectly when he said that it’s all very “thinly philosophized.” The word “universal” is the biggest no-no in any field, from photography to women’s studies, yet it has continued to impress people. If a 25-year-old kid walked into a gallery and had the same project idea, people would find it childish, vindictive, and silly. But because Mr. Sanford is relatively established, charismatic, 42 (he is, by the way, twice my age), and can use words like “universality of collective experience,” people fawn.
The whole experience has been a terrible reflection on the gallery. I just hope that people see through it before these sadistic people profit off of my pain.
Halley Bondy
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Fraser denies having displayed the e-mails in a way that revealed Bondy’s identity. For more, see washingtoncitypaper.com/citydesk
Marshal Low
thanks for your eye-opening piece about the disgusting conditions U.S. Marshals have to deal with day in and day out at D.C. Superior Court (“Pen and Stink,” 2/2). I think it is a disgrace that these fine law-enforcement officers (one of whom is my son) have to subject themselves to this kind of filth. It’s bad enough that they are subjected to dealing with these kinds of prisoners, but to have to risk their own health in the process is just criminal in itself.
Thanks for your article.
Joe Franchi
Secane, Pa.
Paper Thin
my wife has been bringing home the city Paper almost every week for the past five years. Over that entire time, I have not once read an interesting article in your paper. The stories appear to be written to no one audience and generally have no more weight than why the dog catcher catches the dog. The only things worthwhile are Savage Love and your listing of movies that is kept current each week.
The thing is, I do not understand why you cannot write interesting stories either about something in D.C. or about someone’s personal stories about some topic—like The Sun magazine. There are probably a lot of good writers in the city.