This article was published on March 8, 2018. Read Story Transcript Breathtaking landscapes. Timeless art masterpieces. Big shiny photographs of big shiny humans. You put coffee table books featuring any of the above in your living room and they say: “These giant books I never open reflect my taste.” But do they also say say something else? Do they, perhaps say, “I’m boring”? A new coffee table book by two Italian photographers will definitely not say that. It’s designed solely to showcase the beauty of chickens. As It Happens host Carol Off spoke with Matteo Tranchellini, and his work partner, Moreno Monti, about their unusual book called CHICken, which they funded through a Kickstarter campaign.  Here is part of their conversation. Matteo, why did you decide to photograph these beautiful chickens? This is our passion because we have a studio in Milano with a little garden. We want to have some pets. We decide to buy some chicken, some little chicken, beautiful chicken — a cocincina —​ not a popular chicken. When we buy the chicken, we contact the farmer and the farmer invite us to photograph some chicken in an exhibition. The work start in the exhibition because we start to photograph some chicken and we understand this animal is incredible —​ like model. 

Frank Davis is on a quest to find evidence of his first, and only, encounter with his idol, Johnny Cash. It was Good Friday in 1993 when the musician from St. John’s ran into the Man in Black at the Halifax airport. A stranger with a camera snapped a photo of the pair, but 25 years later, Davis still hasn’t seen the image and he’s hoping the power of social media will reunite him with the mystery photographer. “The woman who took that picture could be living on the next street from me or she could be in Timbuktu. You have no way of knowing,” said Davis, who put a call out on Facebook over the weekend. “I know it’s a long time, that’s 25 years, so the chances are pretty slim, but it’s out there anyway.” Davis is a huge Cash fan, so when The Highwaymen came to Halifax in 1993, it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. The day after the concert, Davis had to return home for work, but his wife stayed behind to visit her sister.  “The last thing that she said to me as I left the hotel room was, ‘Leave the camera with me because I want to take a picture of [her sister] Susan’s baby.'” That’s how Davis ended up camera-less in front of Cash at the arrivals terminal.  When Davis noticed him standing alone on the sidewalk, “I just about ran over people getting off the bus,” he said with a laugh.  “When I walked up to him, I said, ‘Man I’ve been waiting a long time to shake your hand.'” Frank Davis said after meeting Johnny Cash at the terminal, he bumped into him again at the airport lounge.

There’s a wonderfully quirky and little-known information archive in downtown Winnipeg that predates Google and probably has more hidden secrets than the search engine giant. It’s a rich resource for researchers, a rabbit hole for history lovers and a trivia buff’s bonanza. Did you know: Winnipeg’s first civic holiday was observed Sept. 16, 1874? That Winnipeg’s first professional photographer offered to trade photos for wood or flour? You can find, in this paper-based Winnipeg Public Library archive, the seating capacity of all of Winnipeg’s movie theatres in 1978, or the minimum wage rates for every year between 1921 (25 cents) and 2003 ($6.75). Welcome to the Where File — as in “where can I find this?” or “where do I go for that?” or “where are those?” Louis-Philippe Bujold goes through some of the entries in the Where File.