I kept saying to Michael, “keep your hands off the images.” He retorted that he wasn’t touching them, at least not with his hands.
The gallery in Rockport had a Bruce Davidson exhibition. Included were photos from the Civil Rights movement in the early 60’s, along with images of the changing racial makeup of NYC. He showed the neighborhoods above 100th Street once inhabited buy Jews which became Spanish Harlem and the lawns of Central Park, once the haven of the rich who lived on 5th and CPW, now the weekend retreat of the colored tenement dwellers from above 110th Street. The images were a credit to his skills as a person as much as a photographer. How a white guy traversed some of these paths seemed an equally interesting story to the one he told.
But, to me, having my friend Michael there to see it brought the tale up to the present. I know enough of the past, even if I was a white, Jewish kid, born in 1947, and not a person of color who lacked status as a human and a citizen in this country until the 50’s. We should all be ashamed. He examined the frames, noting details many might have missed. We all saw the humanity, or lack thereof in the pictures, but he felt it in different way.
Michael has four years on me. He lived through the period, prospering and succeeding. He felt those images as I could not. As he said with a bit of Blutarsky (who, BTW, became a US Senator), “it took me ten years to finish college and then Lorin convinced me that I could make a difference and encouraged me to go to law school.”
How ironical. Michael lives in Maine, a state with not a lot of brothers. His skills as a person, though not as necessary as they once were, will still be needed. At the Union ME Fair, I didn’t see any people of color. No evident Latinos, Eurasians, or Asians in the crowds, though some of the grips who worked the rides looked Mexican. I live in VT, one of the whitest states and, certainly, not a home to a host of Jews. Just think about where we came from, inner Brooklyn. And who do we run into when we land in Maine (me for a photo workshop at Maine Media College), Bruce Davidson. Exodus or coincidence?
Nice post.
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