...And Six Things I Did Right!

[This is the flip side of yesterday's post, if you haven't seen that already. —Mike]

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I certainly started early enough. I did my first serious documentary project in seventh grade (to calculate the age of kids if you know what grade they're in, take the grade and add five and you'll be within a year). We went on a school trip one Spring vacation from Wisconsin to Washington D.C., and I took two whole "rolls" (126 cassettes) of film on our day trip to the battlefield at Gettysburg. I was a Civil War buff as a kid—this isn't a trivial fact, because poring over many books of Civil War documentary photography turned out to be a big part of my early education about photography. Two cassettes for my Instamatic 104 was twenty-four pictures, in just one day—that was something; I was already an outlier  :-) .  I got my first serious camera at 16, a present from my father, and I had my first one-man show in the dining room of my prep school either that year or the next. I think I started cutting out cool pictures from magazines when I was six or seven years old, and I was drawing at three or four. So I can't say I didn't start early enough.

I saw a whole lot of original work. By the time I got to the Corcoran in 1982 (I had been class of '79 at Dartmouth—never graduated—so I was a few years late already) I was already in the habit of studying pictures. I would make regular circuits of bookstores and libraries and galleries and museums. For years I would go to a big newsstand store on Dupont Circle on Sunday morning because that's when they put out all the new issues out, and I'd page through all the magazines I could and look at the new features. When I was at the Corcoran I learned where the "back stairs" were, up from the basement where the school was located to the public museum above, and when a new photography show was hung I'd pop upstairs during the day to visit it—sometimes every day. For a long time I made a regular walking circuit of galleries and museums in the downtown D.C. area to look at work. I'm particularly grateful to Kathleen Ewing, of Kathleen Ewing Gallery. She was the significant other of my mentor Steve Szabo, who taught at the Corcoran, and she used to let me have access to her stored portfolios of artists' original work. As long as I handled it properly, I could pull out any box and look at the original prints up close, no glass. I could do the same thing at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division in the Jefferson Annex, where I could browse the rows of old filing cabinets containing all the original work from the Farm Security Administration, and I could order up portfolio boxes from the vaults. For really valuable works, an attendant had to stand next to me and handle the work with white cotton gloves, because visitors were not allowed to touch. I tried to limit those requests so as not to terminally pester the staff. But for many lesser portfolios I was trusted to leaf through them myself, especially after they got to know me. That was where I got one of my favorite compliments—the late shift entrance guard at the Jefferson Annex was a big friendly black guy who I often chatted with on the way out. Once, when he saw me coming out again, just before closing time, he exclaimed, "Je--s Chr--t, do you live here?!" I liked that. I was paying my dues. I would travel to different cities to see shows, and I'd see more demotic work at places like historical societies and the National Archives. To paraphrase something Thomas Jefferson said about reading, I had a canine appetite for pictures. For a while I felt like I had seen as much original work up close and personal as anybody. That's not true any more, because I haven't kept up those old habits and I haven't seen as much post-2000 work. At the Photo West trade show in San Francisco once, a friend asked, "what have you seen?" and I surprised him by answering "there's almost nothing here!" We were talking at cross purposes, of course—he wanted to know what new gear I had seen that was interesting, and I assumed he meant what work I had seen—pictures—and there were only about three displays of photographs on the entire show floor. I was always more interested in the pictures.

I stayed in photography. For someone who is basically pliable and accommodating and easily influenced, I can sometimes, about some things, be remarkably stubborn. Once, in a hallway at the Corcoran, I was having a conversation with the then Director of Admissions. He explained to me that if a law school class has ten percent of its graduates not working in law or a related field ten years after graduation, that class would be considered a failure, whereas, if an art school has as many as ten percent of its graduates still working in art or a related field ten years after graduation, it's considered a banner year. I decided in the space of an instant that, come hell or high water, I would still be in the photography field ten years after I graduated. I graduated in 1985, and in 1995 I was Editor-in-Chief of Photo Techniques magazine in Chicago (now defunct—I left in 2000). In fact, apart from several unwilling descents into near-total unemployment and one short detour into magazine work in an unrelated field, I've pretty much stayed in photography for 35 years. Pyrrhic victory, maybe, but I'm kinda proud of that, because I might as well be.

I kept learning. When I realized I wasn't going to be able to go to graduate school, I made a little list of...hmm, I never remember numbers...maybe 12 things that I thought I should achieve or experience on the way to "mastering" the subject. I think over the years I achieved all but three. Regarding one failure, I recall sitting across the desk from the formidable Eugene Ostroff of the Smithsonian Institution, while he explained to me, patiently but forcefully, that I couldn't just waltz in off the street and ask to work at a major museum for six months just "for the experience." (That had been one of the objectives on my list.) He explained that people worked for years to fit themselves for such jobs, and sometimes still couldn't find opportunities. Made sense to me. But the same thing didn't stop me from doing several other things on the list that technically I shouldn't have been able to do. Now, what keeps me fresh is that I learn from TOP readers all the time, so I feel like I keep my hand in. There's always more you can learn.

I was always on the right side. I'm not going to blow my own horn here, but I think I was always on the the side of the people I was serving—the side of my students when I was a teacher, and of my readers when I was a writer. I was doing what I did because I loved it, not primarily to turn a buck. This percolated to the top every couple of years in one way or the other. Situations would arise that tested my principles. Like when I was offered a large sum of money for a reprint of an article I had written—I was pretty sure the payment would compromise my editorial integrity, so I turned the money down and let the company reprint the article anyway. I never really could be an insider with an attitude like that. But I'm happy with my choices.

Finally, I got to spend years with my hobby as my job. How great is that? I recall the day when reality smacked me upside the head back in downtown Washington, D.C. I was a penniless, literally ragged art student at the Corcoran, and one day I was walking from the Corcoran (at 17th and New York Avenue, right across from the Old Executive Office Building, which in turn is right next to the White House) to a museum on the Mall to see a photography exhibit. As usual I was full of all the stuff I was learning and seeing and doing, and I realized I was actually pitying the poor souls I was passing on the streets—clean-shaven young functionaries, bureaucrats and laywyer-types in dark suits and red Reaganite "power ties." (So their main opportunity for self-expression in matters of dress was essentially dictated too—they all wore red ties. It was supposedly to project that you were powerful. It actually projected that you were conformist.)

I just felt so privileged, and so fortunate. I got to live photography 24/7—work on it, learn it, experiment in the darkroom until two in the morning, hunt down the next picture—and this was all just too great in my opinion. It filled me up. I loved it. I felt so lucky. All those poor pitiable people in their red ties and the females in their "business suits" didn't get to do what I got to do. They didn't get to eat, drink, and breathe photography.

Then it hit me...wait a minute—I'm a poor, raggedy art student with a bad haircut and a cheap camera around my neck. None of these people envy me. They think what they're doing is important. And I'm walking around with a superiority complex?!

I had to smile at myself. I honestly hadn't looked at it that way before.

But you know, I still felt like I was the lucky one.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kylian: "Would love to see the photographs from your first one man show. If you can find them.  ;-) 

"And I might be a tiny bit jealous of your life, raggedy art student and all."

Mike replies: How about a few shots from my first-ever documentary project, of our seventh-grade trip to the Gettysburg battlefield? I haven't had the dining-room show prints for many years. I don't know where or how they were lost—probably to the school, since many of the photos were of students and teachers and a number of them appeared in Yearbooks. I think one was actually used in the school's promotional materials. But I'll bet I could find a few of those Instamatic snaps I made as a 12-year-old. Stay tuned, I'll go look....

[Later in the day] ...Here you go. Hope this serves!

Original size 3 1/2 inches square, including border.

I was excited to be at the famous battlefield I had read so much about, and was very intent on taking pictures, eager to preserve the occasion and the facts. However I was disappointed by my results (not the last time that happened, I have to say). Topography that I thought was clear at the scene did not seem to appear in the pictures. And it's quite possible my imagination was supplying some of what I thought was there to be seen. Of course, fundamentally a battlefield memorial is just countryside, with some plaques and statues and old cannons here and there.

I do remember that, as a whole, the documentary project was a big, vivid early lesson: namely, that a photograph is a thing, but it is not the same thing as the thing.

I ask you, is it any wonder Yr. Hmbl. Ed. began wanting a better camera? Not too long after that I began using my father's Zeiss Ikon Contaflex, with its fixed 50mm ƒ/2.8 Tessar, and that was a big step up. The Zeiss, alas, was stolen from me at my job at a Kentucky Fried Chicken stand when I was fifteen.

Someday I shall get a good enough camera. I live in faith.

You might think this ill composed, but I took it from a moving tour bus with a camera with one fixed shutter speed. I know, nobody cares how hard you worked.

Two of my friends, Bill Jordahl and Cal Malone. I got to see both of these guys again just a few years ago. I can't recall if Bill is a grandfather now—I think so—but Calvin is. Bill had an older sister (on whom I later had a very big crush), and, with such an advantage, he was thought to be wise in the ways of girls and sex. So one night at the hotel he schooled us boys in the arcana of sexual terms like first base, second base, and third base...and then he sailed right on to fourth base (to which he did not assign the conventional meaning), fifth base, sixth base, seventh base, and so forth. I don't think any of us began to get wise to the fact that he was winging it until his imagination began to falter at around twelfth or thirteenth base. None of us really minded; he had our attention. Several boys and girls came home from that trip as couples, if I recall, including one 8th grade boy with a 7th grade girl, which scandalized the more conservative among us.

There are more of these—well, I told you, there are 24—but I think you get the idea.

Kylian: "Cool cool cool.  :-)  Thank you!"

Comments

[Nigel Voak]

Happy accident and being useless at my chosen profession contributed to my photographic journey getting off to a good start.

I was taken on as a trainee cartographer at the ministry of Defence in London. After a couple of years, the powers that be decided that something had to be done with the world’s most useless cartographer.

Pre Thatcher-Britain was a kinder, gentler sort of place and I was not “let go”, but a job in the Map Store in the central London MOD HQ was found for me. The job just involved digging out maps of places the military were interested in.

When a map could not be found, I would be dispatched to a large map shop which happened to be near the Photographers Gallery. I would always stop there and browse the exhibitions and visit the book shop. It was free to see the shows back then. At an early stage of my interest in photography I was exposed to the cutting edge of photography in the UK.

After a couple of years ambition got in the way and I went into the world of Structural Engineering, where with day release (a good system they had in the UK that does not exist anymore, in this short-term profit world), I eventually became a good Structural Engineer.

When for a question of women, I found myself in Italy at the age of 30, with no job lined up, I had a good portfolio of work and I got a poorly paid job as “official photographer” with our provincial theatre and a freelance gig with a local news magazine. I had a great time for a couple of years.

I think I was right to try the world of professional photography. It served to teach me that it had nothing to do with good photography, or the love of photography. In fact, it is a cut throat world, and you soon discover that a lot of the people that get to have exhibitions and stuff succeed because the know the right people and in Italy belong to the right Party.

Eventually I got back into the world of Engineering, but carried on with the theatre work for 10 years or so before I got photographically burnt out.

An Engineering job with lots of foreign travel got me interested in photography again after my break. I worked like hell to get the things I was supervising done before time, giving me usually a day or two to explore some foreign country.

I’m not sure anymore whether I am interested in photography, or if I use photography to explore the things, I am interested in. I have for sure had the opportunity to meet lots my Jazz heroes for example and lots of other interesting people along the way.

Photography has certainly broadened my horizons in life, so I guess I got my photographic journey right.

[Carson Harding]

So the things you would do differently were decisions about methods and technical practices related to what you were doing.

The things you think you did right were decisions about what to do and how to live doing it.

I hope to do that well!

[Ilkka]

Yesterday’s post got me thinking that yes, I could have done a lot of things differently. But then I thought, maybe I shouldn’t have. And this your today’s post exactly confirms it. If I had done things differently, I would be in a different situation now and would probably be a different person. I wasted some money that I could have saved. But looking at it now, if I hadn’t bought the film Hasselblad when I did, and the M6, I would have probably ended up with a digital Hasselblad and M9 today, instead of a better, more suitable ‘for me’ camera, at a small fraction of the cost. I did almost all the things you mentioned above, except choose photography as a job. It gave me a lot of freedom and I think it was the right decision. For me. Lucky me.

[Thomas Rink]

I took up photography as a teenager. After I left school I considered to apply for a photography MFA degree course ("Diplom Fotodesigner"). As my courage left me, I enrolled for biology instead - a subject which I liked at school. To be honest, I don't regret this decision! This study course taught me an approach to make sense of the world around me which, I think, influenced and improved my photography. Namely, keen observation of your subjects and constant reflection about how to relate all these observations to each other. Obviously, I can't tell whether the MFA would have taught me the same - but the scientific education contributed to the person I am now, and my photographic work is part of me.

Best, Thomas

[Mike]

Mike, you were (and are) the lucky one. Thanks for sharing your luck with us.

[Mark Morris]

This makes me very happy that you had many fulfilling experiences in your life. It is inspiring that you were so dedicated and focused. I hope things are well for you now.

[spot]

This,is why I come back here.
Thank You.

[Steve Rosenblum]

I think that what I did right in my life and my photography have been based upon something that I only realized looking back at it. I won't bore everyone with the details, but last July I retired from a 40 year career in medicine most of which was spent as a Cardiologist a career I never intended for myself, performing procedures that had not been invented when I started. Both in my career and in my life there was no way to have predicted the opportunities and paths that appeared along the way which offered me choices I could not have imagined. A good general example is that when I was at University from 1970-74 there was no such thing as a desktop PC, or a "Mini" (think the size of a filing cabinet) computer. There was no internet, world wide web, or email besides primitive messaging for people with rare access to mainframe computers, which is the only kind of computer that existed. There were no cell phones or smart phone, much less wrist watch computers (something we only saw in Dick Tracy cartoons). My first encounter with a flat screen TV was in a short story written by Ray Bradbury called "The Veldt" that he wrote in the early 50's and I read at age 12 in 1964. No digital cameras of course. Nonetheless, I took a year of computer programming in 1971 because the problem solving of using Fortran interested me (I had to punch my own cards and wait a day for the guy behind the glass booth to hand me a foot of bi-fold paper printout because I made one error in the code!). Later in my life the same curiosity lead me to become an IT consultant for heath care systems struggling with newly mandated electronic records, not to mention using PhotoShop which was invented by two of my Ann Arbor neighbors. My point is, you never know what life will present you with--technological change, who you fall in love with, where you will move to, who you sit next to on a plane, when you will lose your job and then miraculously, end up doing something you love much more! You have to keep you eyes, brain and heart open to what life puts in front of you and then have the courage to follow a new path where it leads you.

I once saw this saying on a slide during a presentation someone was giving about managing change in a stressed organization: "When one door closes another one opens. But, sometimes there's Hell in the hallway!".

[Jim Henry]

RE:
"our seventh-grade trip to the Gettysburg battlefield"

If you can't find them, I have some from my Brownie Hawkeye (circa 1955) that you can have. Mostly cannons, I think. I have them here... somewhere close, I'm sure.

[Phil]

These two columns, back to back, are wonderful. Like you, some of my "what went right" experiences include starting early (shooting and developing B&W at the age of 16; looking at lots of good pictures (in my case, in the photobook section of our main libraries); and getting some encouragement from peers and knowledgeable elders) but there is one thing that I've ruminated about many times and it could go into either column: whether I should have "turned pro" when I had the chance.

When I was in my '20's (back in the 1980's) I had finished my undergrad Geography degree, was working in a map library, and I was shooting lots in my spare time (which I had lots of). I was hanging around the punk/new wave scene, taking portraits of club-goers in dark back alleys, and so on. And I started to seek out and talk to working pros and also enquired at the photo program at a vocational college. But in the end, I went back to grad school to become a Map Librarian.

Now, looking back 35 years later, I think that it would have been a hard slog as professional. The work that pays seems to have changed so drastically. My personal style has always been quirky so probably wouldn't have helped (but I don't really know that for sure). I'm at the young end of the baby boom so I would always seem to be competing against more experienced colleagues.

On the other hand, although I never became a "Map" librarian, I worked in interesting jobs that allowed me to travel lots and I always took my camera. Many times, as I drove from one small town to another during a work trip, I could stop and wander some interesting place with my camera, free to shoot whatever I fancied, not what someone told me to shoot (and yet I was paid for the trip!). I joined a few clubs and was able to exhibit in a few Salons so I could show my work that I was personally happy with. And now, as I get close to retirement I can still shoot whatever I want and I have a large archive that I'm trying to organize and decide what my first retirement projects will be.

Gee, I guess that sounds like that fact that I did not turn pro definitely falls into the "what I did right" category, doesn't it? But every once in a while I page through a book by someone from my generation and I think, "hmmm, I wonder if I could have been there and done that".

[Kylian]

(And actually, the lone cannon, "ill composed" shot, is my favorite.)

[Stan B.]

24 "bases?"

[Kurt Kramer]

One thing I did right was to undertake your prescription in the "Digital Variant" column of late 2015. Shoot daily, with the same camera and prime lens, and make a prints of the work. From Chicago, shooting daily, I quickly learned that I could not go to "picturesque" places like Lake Geneva, Starved Rock, Galena, or even the the shore of Lake Michigan. So, I started doing morning walks to a repertoire of coffeehouses. It changed the way that I shoot. I became more comfortable shooting people. In fact I actively wanted people in my photographs. And I learned to seek and appreciate good light.
This resulted in a November 2019 exhibit that I titled "I Took My Camera Out for Coffee".
Thanks Mike
P.S. With the pandemic and the closing of coffeehouses, I am still adrift trying to find new subject matter.

[Richard Parkin]

“... handle the work with white cotton gloves ...” . I see that so often on TV, people handling centuries old unique manuscripts wearing white gloves and usually talking to camera. No one seems to worry about the saliva spray as they breathe or talk. I wonder if this coronavirus pandemic will make them think again?