Editor's Letter: A Look Behind the Scenes

When we launched the photographic spread we call Behind the Scenes, we hoped to accomplish two things: illuminate the often-overlooked small companies whose products and services are essential to American life, and provide our readers (and ourselves) the opportunity to experience the work of some of the country's best art photographers. Rather than use a different photographer each issue, we decided to give one artist a year's worth of assignments, so that together we could create a portfolio of work. This past year was Andrew Moore's.

Andrew's first piece for Inc. set a very high standard. It was a landscape of Las Vegas, washed in a pastel light that gives the city an almost unreal serenity. Like much of Andrew's work, this picture has a painterly quality that elevates and transforms the common into something beautiful.

Andrew traveled all over America for us (most recently to the Delaware River; see "The Business of the Bridge"). His own work has taken him to Bosnia, Russia, Vietnam, and, for much of 2008 and 2009, Detroit. When I asked him recently if Detroit reminded him of Bosnia, he said, "No, it's more like Pompeii -- much of the place is intact, but from one day to the next people simply left." Andrew's remarkable photographs of this iconic American city are being collected into a book, Detroit Disassembled, to be published in the spring.

Now, on an altogether different note, I'd like to give a shout-out to Zoomdoggle, a New York City company that sent Inc. a few samples of a product called Buckyballs and turned us into addicts. Buckyballs are sets of small, powerful magnetic globes (a bit bigger than those silver balls that are sometimes sprinkled onto cupcakes) that can be configured into all kinds of intricate designs or just played with as modern worry beads. We love them. If Inc. had a seal for approved fun, Buckyballs would get one.