Photography Thinks
So, David Bowie got the message. “Major Tom’s” circuit board frizzed. Iggy Stardust will no longer be with us and the world will be a lesser place. I am 68. Were I to die tomorrow, the world would not feel diminished a bit. Luckily, I can look at his picture and listen to his songs. Visit You Tube today and “Let’s Dance.” Live while you can, have fun and don’t waste time hating or loathing or speaking bad of others.
Image borrowed from Billboard.
We wonder why medical costs are so high? People with jobs who don’t sit at desks take meals on the fly. The fare at some service stations is designed to sell, not to fuel the body with nutritious foods. Grab it, heat it and eat it.
So, Sharon Duckman and I go to Sarasota with a group of Valencia Reservists, three busloads to be exact. People talking trash, retiree trash (grandkids, golf, cards, restaurants and where do you by bagels) don’t interest me and what I know doesn’t interest them. We stay by ourselves because I don’t have social skills and cannot answer questions like: what did you do for a living; where did you come from; and where do you live. Besides, nobody listens anyway.
We are walking around the Selby Botanical Gardens, looking at orchids and trees, shooting a few images. The sun is up, harsh and specular. To light one of my shots of Sharon, I take out a reflector and ask a passerby to hold it for me. In a flash of a second, she says, “Are you Lorin Duckman?”
Now, who would know me at a Botanical Gardens in Florida? “Yes, who are you?”
“I am you cousin Sharon Sumliner.” Her Father’s Mother and my Father’s Father were brother and sister.
We haven’t seen each other for twenty years, which makes her post Sharon Duckman. Still, I don’t know how she recognized me. She said it was my eyes and voice. I certainly didn’t recognize her. And, she did it so quickly.
But it was an extreme joy to see her; one which made the trip worthwhile even if I didn’t make any friends on the bus. We talked about family without figuring out why or how a family of the size of ours could dissolve so quickly. Lots of dead people whom we knew in common. Only a few around.
Seems to be happening to a lot of families. People die. People live. People move away. Many didn’t follow the Jewish lifestyle. Petty feuds. Short guest lists for weddings and bar mitzvahs. No family trees and no death notices. Life is complicated.
So, for a couple of weeks we haven’t been going out. Holidays have brought friends and relatives to the Sunshine State to escape the unpredictable weather in places north and west. The economy needs them; the environment doesn’t.
A little before noon, a New Englander approached me as I shot in the swamp at the nearby US Wildlife Preserve, Loxahatchee. Identifying himself as a hunter and lobsterman, he asked me if I had seen anything alive. No doubt he meant animals and reptiles who, as an outdoorsman would undoubtedly know, don’t come out in the heat of day. And besides, why would they come out when people were in their home. This isn’t a zoo; it’s a swamp.
Without going into the particulars of my response, let’s just say I pointed to the greenery around us, I noted that swamps were locations full of life and full of death. My simple answer which this image supports is “Yes.”
So, these photographers who taught us how to live die. We never knew them until they have an obit. Their legacy is to show us what they saw, making us see better.
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.
Rabbi Rothenberg says he is a collector, bordering on hoarder. He built a library at Temple Anshei Sholem which shelves 2.000 books. He studies talmud, leads prayer and remains dutifully loyal and connected to his wife, Ethel.
Part of living a long life iinvolves luck. Part of it has to be love. And part of it is having a home care worker.
How else would you get around?
When I shoot portraits, I ask that the sitters dress a certain way. I suggest they bring a prop or two. It gives me something to talk about and having something special in the hands of the person posing makes them realer. The stories, genuine as they can be, elevate the shoot like nothing else can.
So, Rita’s part of a project to shoot old/old people. She called me young. “I’m not young. I am young old. You are old/old. I am honored by your presence.” She reluctantly took off her glasses, telling me, “I don’t like my bags.” Hey, Rita! You get bags by getting to be your age. And besides, “you are beautiful.”
As for the book. Her husband, Buzz, whom she married after WWII carried it in France during the war. It was a book of Jewish prayers given out by the Army. He carried it in his breast pocket, because it felt uncomfortable in his rear pants pockets. When the German bomb exploded, he caught shrapnel all over his body, but not his heart. The book protected him.
So, I used to live in Salsibury, VT. Still have two friends who called themselves, “The Lake People.” They lived on Lake Dunmore, just up the road from Keewadin Dunmore, a camp for the privileged. People weren’t so friendly in Salisbury. Not a lot of Jews. A smelly egg place. Some antique stores. And the put in the power lines that drove out the wildlife, ruining my view.
I loved our house. Sharon hated it. Always cold. Bugs. Mice. Fear it would slide off the side of the rock.
We had turkeys and deer in the front yard. Hoards of mosquitos. Snow drifts that cost a fortune to plow. Wasps. Trees felled by lightning. Maple trees which someone tapped, paying us off in syrup of all grades. Our lives there were complicated.
When the cost of upkeep became too great and the ability to earn a living disappeared for many, people just left. We managed to sell our place. The new owner defaulted.
I always have a camera with me, except when I intentionally don’t. Jay Maisel said it was the first rule of photography: always have a camera with you that you know how to operate. My camera, Walker Evans, doesn’t like to stay in the car. He could attract thieves. And he doesn’t like the heat. Besides, how do I make a photo if I don’t have a camera?
Why not carry it? Somedays I just want to look. I want to see more things and not just ones that might be photographical. I also scout better when I am not thinking of shooting, maybe because I feel six pounds lighter.
So, we are shopping in Boca at Whole Foods after seeing the exhibition at the Boca Museum. On my shoulder is a Canon Mark III and a 50mm, L1.2 lens. A clerk in the produce section walks over and asks, “That a 50,1.2! How do you like it?”
“I love it.” It’s Walker’s favorite lens; my favorite walking around lens. I took shit from Dominic Chavez and Peter Turnley at two Maine Media Workshops for using it. Two photojournalists of note, they tried to get me to switch to a 35mm saying I would capture more deatails, some of which I didn’t see. These guys like a lot of background. Me. I think the 50mm is more versatile, works for street, landscape, portraits. Makes me use my feet. Cannot be lazy. Works in low light. Tack sharp. Who cares if it is a little omnipresent and sits on a big camera which draws attention? Since I shoot mostly people who know what I am doing, I don’t need to be slinking around. Usually, when I want it, I get great bokeh.
“Mine, too,” said Lucca. “Got it tattooed on my arm.”