Photography Thinks
Barbara Grau died a few weeks ago. I photographed her last year for the official Temple Anshei Shalom’s President’s Wall. She had just gotten over her latest chemo/poisoning. We talked as we shot. She said she was satisfied with what she had done with her life. More importantly, she thanked me for making her feel beautiful again.
So, a guy lives. We never heard of him, but we know him. He leaves the world different than how he found it. Why? He has imagination.
So, Artur died. He had more patents than Edison. From my standpoint, he gave me the power to hang things on my walls and to have my flash go off when I push the shutter on my camera, making my life better. Didn’t know him, but thank you for living a long and productive life and for making my life better.
Any time a photojournalist dies, the world is a little less safe and its future a little less optimistic. One image can bring a message words can only hope to deliver. One need not know the artist to understand her voice.
Her obit in the NYT tells of a woman who saw truth and put her vision to work to educate and enlighten.
How inspiring she must have been to those who saw her work or worked with her.
So, at his funeral service, which I didn’t attend because Sharon and I were out of town and didn’t know about it, the presiding Rabbi said God didn’t take Cantor Sapir, he took himself.
Why? I don’t know. I wish I knew before he did it. Many wish they did, too. Could we have helped him? Who knows? Everyone must make their own decision when to live and when to die. Some may need to be told how much they are loved.
I didn’t know him well or for so long. We were the same age, almost. I envisioned growing old with him, learning more about all the things he knew: music, humor, talmud and the meaning of life. I don’t have many friends; he could have been one.
Cantor’s voices connect prayers with God. Efrain loved to sing in Temple, using melodies to rid the congregants of self-consciousness, elevating their thoughts and minds to holy places. He’d pause between some phrases to look out into the audience, listening for proof he had connected, him to them and them to the angels. He once told me that he had observed me banging my prayer book on a pew during a prayer and that I had used an alternative beat. I sit in the last row; how observant.
We did a photo shoot in my studio, a formal shot for the hallway and the Temple Anshei Shalom bulletin. It took two hours. He was dressed perfectly, hair groomed, suit/shirt/tie selected for the occasion. We exchanged stories, listened to cantorial music and played with the lights. During one song by a noted Cantor, he explained the guy was just singing nonsense words, because the music was so beautiful and he wanted to sing along. I told him, after the shoot, how handsome he was and what a joy it was to photograph him. He said he never saw himself as being so good looking and that my images made him very happy.
The shot of him holding the Torah after the reading was the last shot of him. Taken two weeks before his death at Morning Minyan, it is not my usual kind of photograph. He isn’t looking at the camera and really doesn’t know or care I am in front of him. I usually go for the head, but I was drawn to his hands and the words on the Torah cover. You can see the joy in his heart, his love of Torah and feelings for humanity.
The Photo Gods helped me shoot this image. I wish God had helped me with fix his self image. He was a beautiful man, a significant man. My life will be less without him. You see, sometimes it isn’t how long you know someone but how well.
Richard Horowitz died. He left the world better than he found it.
He played Timpani drums and made conductors batons. Nothing is seen more during a symphony concert than a baton. And nothing is more welcomed than the beat of the timpani drum. One might think that the drummer doesn’t even have to be a musician. Just wait patiently for the right moment and barge right in.
No member of the orchestra can set the dramatic tone fast or more effectively than a timpani drum. No one can lead an orchestra without a baton. Richard had his drum set right in front of him. Armed with what you can be sure was one of his homemade drumsticks, he waited the conductors cue. Vmmmm, Bam.
So, Hilla Becher died at 81. She was too young. Another photographer who should have lasted longer.
What she and her husband brought to the party now seems banal and commonplace. But before them, people didn’t give the industrial plant any notice. We have all seen big building and smokestacks. Water towers in certain places are breeding grounds for microbial diseases. They not only saw the beauty in factories, silos and storage, they recognized them as art. Then they arranged them on posters, deemphasizing their importance, for a second, while heightening your interest in seeing what they saw. No one had done it like this before. And all our attempts are lame.
When I lived in Burlington VT, a town where the people were colder than the temperature, I wanted to shoot the Moran Building, a dilapidated structure on Lake Champlain. They had their people, their artists, their crew. Me. I just lived nearby, visiting everyday. Angry at the damage the plant did to the Lake and wondering if the next incarnation would make it healthier, I longed to get inside with my camera. One day I did. Just a short visit, enough to snap and show what I would do if given more opportunity.
The two recent UVM graduates, whatever Gov’t agency gave the money for coming up with a development plan and the fund raisers didn’t recognize my desire to contribute my work or my ability. They got people to paint images on the wall and make paintings. The architects sent me one message and probably went back to their photographer. I never heard from the Mayor or whomever controlled the art. One person told me I was on the team, though I didn’t get a jersey or a cup.
Never made it onto their list. Not a member of the inner circle of Burlington Artists. Didn’t work for the Free Press or 7 Days. Not a donator to BCA. Not sure they let people with attitude inside. They be happy with the same-old, same-old. So, we left.
The Bechers. They live within me, too. Taught me how to see, better.
So, Burt Shavitz died at 80. Another photographer dead, before I could talk with him. I’d like to know what he saw, why he shot what he shot and why he gave it up. I will have to settle for the movie, Burt’s Buzz. And Burt, he probably would not have been too much fun to talk with, even though he was a great man with a big personality who chafed at uniformity and changed the world.
Me. I turned 68 today. I’m alive and well. Couldn’t be happier, as my past drifts farther and farther into the long ago. My wife loves me. Don’t need much more than that.
Who’s Burt? He’s the guy on the box, at least partially. Everyone knows Burt, from his face. But before he made lip balm and other holistic products, he was a photographer who shot the Civil Rights movement, in addition to the street. Another one of those Jewish guys with the photojournalist gene who left the world better than he found it.
Tired of the rigamarole, he moved to Maine, raised some bees and made cosmetics which could be sold to hippies in health food stores. He cared about the environment and hated hypocrisy. Died rich, despite not needing money. He had land and a family. Me, I got no family, except for Sharon and her relatives. Failed living in the Northern New England way. I have toys to play with and a place to live. Still have some friends, though even though they aren’t close by. Now, I just need to be healthy.
Charles Harbutt died, another photographer whose work defined an era left the field before I could meet him. Wonder what it would have been like to study with him? Damn. My life wasted in law. I mighta been a contender. Not brave enough or strong enough. Those guys had to run from danger and carry film.
At 23, he was in Cuba at the invitation of the rebels. I was in Law School. Then he shot the Panthers and the Bario. I watched the news. No one had seen anything like it. But, he got access, because they needed images to show off their causes and he needed a profession. He got to shoot what they showed him, not what was really happening. Then, at some point, he realized that the imagery, taken literally, displayed the commonplace, the idiom. He was being used and what he was seeing and hearing was not real, even though it was occurring before him. So, he interposed surrealism to his frames and changed the world of photojournalism.
I don’t aspire to such lofty heights. Magnum will never recognize my trite street images. The present day doesn’t allow for such photography. Too risky. Rebels shoot their own documentary photography and kill people working for the world press.
I do realize that it isn’t real, the scene in my Paris Street series where I confronted Muslim women begging. Are they really needy? They don’t talk, just stare needy. It’s a set-up, maybe. I walked the Champs Elysee and the Left Bank, places where fashion abounds and could not avoid them. They dot the sidewalks, holding their hands out, heads down, a paper cup close by. Behind a lookout lurks, waving her hand to prevent the photo, screaming out with demands for money. A citizen reproaches me for dolling out a Euro, telling me it will bring more of them, putting my camera at risk. The regulars don’t pay them any mind.
Charles must have seen the same stuff over his years, some from his camera and some from the stable of great shooters he oversaw. He must have realized that the scene changes when the camera appears, even if is not immediately recognized. People have a sense that it’s there or will be there and that is why they show up. So, he made his images more arty. Most importantly, he was still there. And, the one thing that separates photography from the other visual arts is that you got to be there, with your camera.
So, twofer, today. Two people whose art shaped my life in different ways died. One a musician. The other an actor. I borrowed these images from the NYT today, loving them as they show the people as old men. As I look at their pictures, I can hear them performing. Their works will live forever, even if they couldn’t.
Everyone called him “shroom.” Must be short for mushroom, but I don’t know. He would stand at the bus stop at Cherry and Church. Everyday, until recently, I’d see him whenever I went out for a walk. He wore a black coat, more like a cape, the only coat I ever saw him wear. He had a leather hat and reflective sunglasses.
I’d nod and he’d nod. Got a “whassup” every once in a while. He’d just stand there looking back and forth. I asked one day what he saw, “everything,” he said, without explanation. Never got a sentence out of him, though I tried. Not that he was unkind or unfriendly. I just wasn’t one of his crew or into his business.
When you see a person over and over, you feel like you know him. Taking photos the way I do requires a relationship, even if it doesn’t involve the exchange of personal information. People express themselves to photographers through appearance and gesture. The interactions lack actual intimacy, despite putting the three of us, him, me and the camera, in close proximity. So, it’s odd that I would have any feeling about his death or the loss of another person whom I know from the street.
If you wonder what he died of, I was told long ago that he had lung problems, exacerbated by who knows what. He smoked. They all smoke, even if it isn’t healthy. A reliable source said that’s what killed him.
