GOODYEAR (s)

Akron, Ohio, 1970 by Bruce Berman

Photograph and Text by Bruce Berman

This was shot a long time ago. 55 years, in fact.*
Do things get better with age and time?
I look at this image and think, “… if I was grading this, if this was one of my students’ work, well, why didn’t you use HDR while shooting and in Post Production, the get rid of the fuzzy glowing lights? Why didn’t you straighten out the verticals, in PhotoShop so it’s “architecturally correct’?”
And, of course, this would be completely missing the soul of the image! The charm is the ‘flaws.’ The charm is the youth that’s unaware of what the flaws are, or that there are such aa thing as ‘flaws.’
First of all, this was shot on 2 1/4″ film. There was no Photoshop and no way in a darkroom to do anything about “verticals.” I had no idea, 55 years ago about any of that. AND, if I had, I’d have told you to go jump in the lake (Lake Michigan. If it was now, living where I live, I’d suggest you jump in the desert).
“I dig it the way it is and… so what!”
So, have I become a hypocrite?
Hmmmmmm… maybe.
Or maybe I just shouldn’t be teaching at all and just concentrate on my own evolution.
Maybe instead of picking away at these little “legalisms,” I should be worrying about what I’m doing now and what I’ll be doing in the next 55 years (!).
Instead of asking one –or myself– to do all these little tricks that are so easy in the Digital Age, I should be asking, “Do YOU dig it?”
That’s all that really matters, me thinks.

*BTW, while shooting this, someone –probably a bank guard– called the police, who arrived within minutes.Thet wanted to know what I was doing. I was a long-haired dude scoping out a bank in Akron. Of course they wanted to know what I was doing.
I just explained I was attracted to the night scene and the architcture was neat and that I was just an amateur (which I almost was).
On his CB he called into the dispatcher and dismissed the situation by reporting, “There’s no problem… we just have a shutter bug on our hands.”
Loved that!

Continue Reading

POLISH GYM SHOES, 1971

Smoking Man, diner at State and Ohio Streets, Chicago, 1971

Photograph and Text by Bruce Berman

This was the very beginning of my career, when I first realized what I wanted to be … a photographer. Not much has changed since then. This is exactly the kind of photograph I like to make, the kind of experience I like to have. Me on the prowl, encountering a person on the fringe, direct eye contact. The only thing I do now that I did not do then is to get more info about a person, really get to know them. At that time, and for many many years afterwards, I was just satisfied with getting the photograph. As time has gone on I now realize that that is incomplete. It’s the photograph and the text that matter, so that the person photographed is honored, not just used. Maybe that reflects aging, learning the world is not all about me but about me being in the world, about respect for others, maybe just about being a real documentary photographer.
So, here I am, 42 years later and I don’t know who he is, where he was from, what the name of the diner was, what he did for a living, exactly when the date was, etc., i.e., the 5Ws that any journalist knows are essential.
A detail I never noticed before, is his shoes. Believe it or not they are meaningful to me. In my old south side neighborhood, these are the kind of shoes we’d buy every few years. They were our main shoes (except for dress shoes). This man’s are the primos, the better ones, because they have finished leather. Ours were the exact same 10 lace model but a cheaper brand, and the leather on those was called “rough out.”
Why am I talking about shoes?

Continue Reading

CROPDUSTER

Cropduster by ©Charles O’Rear, DOCUMERICA/NARA

 

The DOCUMERICA project was created in 1972 and its Director, Gifford Hampshire, tried to recreate the all-encompassing visual story of America that Roy Stryker began in 1936 with the Farm Security Administration project that told the story of the Depression and, more generally, the story of America as it struggled through the Depression and then toward the end in 1939, told the story of a strong America, preparing for war.

Charles O’Rear was one of the notable photographers for DOCUMERICA. For more about him, including the story of how he created Bliss (the iconic Microsoft screen image) view: https://youtu.be/_G5Z8aMctBw

Continue Reading