The first few photos in this month’s cellphone pics gallery are shots of a book of images by photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. (You can see his stuff by clicking here.) Manuel Alvarez Bravo was just one of the many photographers whose work I saw (in a book, not in real life) for the first time in May. Another was Sam Abell, the photographer who made the image of beans and toast you’ll see later in the cellphone pics gallery. (To see more photos by Sam Abell, click here.) It was kind of funny to find myself exhausted from processing photos and wrestling with their presentation yet unable to stay away from photography. I kept going to the bookstore to try to take my mind off my photo troubles with good old fiction, only to be drawn into the photo books section and seduced by someone else’s pictures. How did this obsession happen to me? I swear I never saw it coming.

This month marked the beginning of a fervent desire to actually buy all of these beautiful photo books. Especially the Sam Abell book. I think it’s because I’ve learned so much about photography in the last two years of doing it as a job, and have a better appreciation now of innovative work. Also, I’ve got a better sense of my own outside-the-commercial-zone aesthetic and can get very excited about photographers who travel in similar directions. Or in very different directions. Mostly, it’s just fun to imagine what it was like to make someone else’s photographs.

For those who may wonder, the little guy in these photos is my nephew Jasper (loves ice, cats, flowers, and putting things into other things). He shows up frequently in the cellphone pics galleries, because when I’m hanging out with him I am too busy to manage a real camera but am compelled to document him anyway. His mama, my sister Joye, manages to take lots of gorgeous photos of him with a real camera, but she has superpowers and extra arms since she became a mom.

This isn’t the first cellphone pics post to include a photo of a dead bird. I keep finding them. What’s up with that? (To see cellphone pics from previous months, click here.)

CLICK THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE IMAGE BELOW TO SEE MAY THROUGH THE CRAPPY YET WONDERFUL LENS OF MY PHONE.