Started with the bebop, but everything is connected

Sunday's Plain Dealer featured an article about Doan's Corners, Cleveland's "second downtown". This happens to be the neighborhood where my parents lived when I was born and was featured in the first piece, 44102 in my project Every Place I have ever lived - The foreclosure crisis in twelve neighborhoods. Every Place is currently installed at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus OH and will be opening at the Argus Museum in Ann Arbor MI on September 28, 2012

In the 40's and 50's Doan's Corners was the home to theaters and clubs, including Lindsay's Sky Bar, one of the great jazz clubs. Turns out it was owned by the parents of one of my Precious Objects subjects Bonnie D. Bonnie was a complete stranger to me when she participated. Friends keep on prodding me to do a project based upon my love of jazz music. While this remains to be done, I love the connection here. Lindsay's was gone by the time I became interested in jazz music in the early sixties. Pretty much the only club still open in the neighborhood was La Cave which featured folk music. I was lucky enough to hear the Stoneman Family and a very young Jose Feliciano at La Cave. The article also mentions the Jazz Temple which it wrongly locates. The Jazz Temple, only open for a couple of years, was located about a mile a way on the site where MOCA Cleveland is now being constructed. Another connection. While pretty young, I was able to hear some stunning music at the Jazz Temple an experience which certainly changed my life. It too was featured in Every Place on the third piece in the series, 44121.

There is a clear line between Lindsay's, The Jazz Temple and the next club in line, Leo's Casino, when you chart the history of jazz in Cleveland. How fortunate for me that Bonnie, a friend of a friend, allowed me one more way to benefit from it.

Respect, part II

While not wanting to be morbid, it has been an unusual two weeks. Birthday yesterday (is there anyone else that thinks the happy birthdays on Facebook almost make the whole thing worthwhile?), three funerals and the 18th anniversary of my dad's funeral.  My dad was buried on the coldest day in the history of Cleveland.  His drafting set from East Tech was my "Precious Object".

The memorial last Saturday was from a colleague from my first career.  Howard was a couple years younger than my dad, both part of the generation that served in the World War II. I have no idea whether Howard had a college degree but people like him and my dad who worked hard could create a comfortable middle class life - own a home, send their kids to college, retire if they wanted.

The memorial a week ago Sunday was for my friend Rabbi Bruce Abrams.  Bruce officiated at my dad's funeral. He was a few months my junior. His parents and younger brother were (are) remarkably like mine in many, many ways. His brother is a contemporary of my brother. (If he is reading this, I have to note that Bruce's brother still has hair.) What got me off my butt to write this was cleaning my studio yesterday and      finding comfirmation class photos I had done twenty years ago which included Bruce.  My son's confirmation was among them.  At the time, quite the accomplishment for a young man with autism. To be sure, quite an accomplishment for his rabbi as well.

In the end, this ends up a tribute to a friend and to a generation.  As I have said before, every time I revisit the people of my dad's generation that participated in "Precious Objects" I am doubly grateful. Grateful as I am for all the people that participated from five year old Sean to those in their nineties. But grateful again for the optimism and seriousness that the previous generation brought forth. They were not without faults. Equally they brought some ideas, at worst worth recognising and, at best worth preserving.

Nonagenarians

Last week's passing of Eve Arnold caused me to revisit the question of what it means to be 90 (in her case 99).

When you are closer to 90 than 30, it is more than an abstraction.  I was going to let it go until the passing of a friend of my own age (I will be 64 this month) on Wednesday.

Early in Precious Objects, when it was mostly friends and family, some of my subjects were their parents in their nineties. (To be honest, a lot were 89, but no need to get picky.)  By the time you reach that point in life, most have trimmed out the junk that bedevils most of us. It was not unusual for the "child" to deal with the question of what to bring.  One thing is certain, 90 year olds generally do not have much of a need to impress.

I loved photographing these subjects. Virtually everything they say has some value.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

Sorry for the obscure title. Recently I saw an exhbition that seemingly had everything. Graphically beautiful, impeccably executed, sound conceptual basis. I met the photographer who is clearly respectful of the people photographed and has gone to extreme lengths to execute the work.  I should have swooned. But I didn't.  Well I did but, was bugged about it.  No matter how much I knew better, I could not get out of my head that I was looking at a butterfly collection. The work even had Latin series titles. We will not say who this is because the point is not a criticism of the work. Frankly, it is admirable work. The question is why did it still bother me and, is it important that it did.

There was a similar problem with The Album Project. I shrugged it off as the viewers not taking the time to get past their superficial impression and to learn why things were the way they were.  I was asked (more than once) why he was cut out?  I stole the idea of the blank backgrounds after seeing Jeffrey Milstein's terrific images of the bottoms of jumbo jets. One of the points of The Album Project is how Isaac's emotional state seems to come from nowhere. He has great difficulty telling you why is happy or, conversely, why he is upset.  Removing the background was intended to show the difficulty of being with him, he gets upset, and you have no idea why. One person asked why it looked like product photography. That had never occurred to me. But,  the comment is not unlike me thinking "butterfly collection."

One reviewer took the time to dig into my other work and into autism and completely "got" the project. Another reviewer was troubled by not being able to see the father/son relationship in the work. He wanted context.

Which brings me back to the initial question. If a group of portraits (the work at the beginning) looks like butterflies on pins, has the artist made a mistake? If a group of portraits (The Album Project) looks like the latest wrenches in the Sears Catalog? 

George and Martin

There was a memorial service in Los Angeles ten days ago for my Uncle George. I saw him last a year ago at his 90th birthday party. I used that occasion to do a shoot for my Precious Objects project and was pleased that he participated. George brought the family crest designed by his father. Both George and my friend Martin (who brought his vintage metronome) were born into upper middle class families in Germany within a month of each other. Both managed to escape The Holocaust. Martin is very much still with us and doing quite well. While their demeanor was very similar and they both stair stepped through multiple countries to get here, their lives were very different. Both had loving and dedicated families George went from being a POW in Canada to Southern California where his optometry practice thrived. He was an early advocate and provider of contact lenses. Needless to say, he was financially successful. Martin was already studying cello when he left Germany and ended his career with the Cleveland Orchestra. Perhaps not as lucrative a vocation as George's but certainly at the top of his profession. Martin and his family did not identify as Jews; George's did. I know in this short piece I have not begun to tell either story but one of the gifts I received in Precious Objects is a glimpse at these small wonders. Good-bye Uncle George.