on tuesday my uncle howard lost his battle to cancer. it’d been a long fight, through several rounds of lymphoma which he appeared to have beaten, but then finally, due to the intense treatments he had to endure, he contracted a form of chemo-induced (and resistant) leukemia that he could not overcome.

howard was a slightly mysterious but always warm and present member of the family. he was everything a good uncle should be: concerned, caring, earnest, genuine, interested and engaged in the twists and turns of an obligatorily dysfunctional family dynamic, and full of advice (especially on topics for which he may have been unqualified). also, like any good uncle he was begrudgingly happy to occasionally be the butt of a long-running joke, and wasn’t afraid to take strong or unpopular stances when he felt he was right (most of the time). he loved all things costco, especially the roast chicken. over the years he gave me several kitchen gadgets he saw on TV, when all i ever really ended up using was a chef’s knife. he was disappointed i never quite figured out what he was trying to explain to me about options trading, and i was disappointed, too. my brain doesn’t always work fast enough for quantitative things. he was happy enough that i bought a small amount of apple stock a while back, but stressed that buying options would’ve been better. i’m sure he was right, but i still don’t understand how it works.

being an uncle myself i will work hard to take the lessons i learned from my relationship with howard to my that with my own niece, willamina. most importantly, that i need to be there for her in her life, make sure my opinions are known, and trust her enough to take what she needs from them, the rest of the family be damned.

uncle howard was gracious enough to allow me to photograph him during several of his treatments, with the caveat that i also had to take an “after” picture once his hair grew back. the picture above is the “after” – after he was in remission from his first (or second?) round of lymphoma in 2008.

the photos below are the last ones i took of him, just a couple weeks ago, shaving with an electric razor in his hospital bed. when i suggested that now was the time to grow a beard if ever there was one he just smiled and kept shaving.

goodbye, uncle howard. thanks for everything.

you’re right, the sodastream was a really, really good idea.

coming up for air after a few very busy months, i’ve been going back through things and find there are just a whole lot of straggler images from 2010 (and the first part of this year) that i’ve yet to post. in the next several weeks i hope to catch up a bit, including starting in for real on an overhaul of the main portfolio site. then again, i’ve been saying that for months now and find it all too easy to get distracted by more pressing concerns.

anyway, toward that end, here are a couple pictures of my father from right around the end of the year.

more to follow shortly.

my brother, james, though we have differing strategies regarding body modification, is begrudgingly willing to help me test out a new craigslist-purchased set of hotlights. my giant 1-year old niece, willa, however, is as of yet too young to object much, and seems to enjoy the process. thanks, jim.

thursday is the first birthday of my niece, willa. somehow she’s turned from a small, helpless little thing into a giant, nearly 30 pound crawling, running, laughing machine. it’s amazing to see, and i couldn’t be a prouder or happier uncle. happy birthday, guppy.

wendy mogel is a psychologist who focuses on issues of parenting and families. ten years ago she wrote a book called “the blessing of a skinned knee”, which dealt with raising kids to be responsible, self-reliant, aware of the world and capable. the book is framed with teachings from jewish law, the talmud and the torah. wendy believes that talmudic ideas can inform modern parenting in a way that could help parents navigate tricky issues like discipline, responsibility and the dangers of coddling.

i am not a parent (though i am an uncle), and most days i feel quite far away from being a parent. still, it’s fairly easy to see the ways in which parenting has changed even in the course of my lifetime. when we used to ride bikes as kids nobody ever wore a helmet. my brother and i, as children, seemed to have far more unscheduled free time than i see kids having nowadays. that isn’t to say we weren’t busy, or weren’t occupied in important things, it’s just that they were our important things. there was less pressure to achieve, or to do everything you could think of all at once. the funny thing was, though, that even with less pressure placed upon us to achieve we didn’t seem to achieve less. sometimes when you leave kids to their own devices they come up with some pretty amazing things – and also take responsibility and accountability for them.  i’d say my generation has done fairly well, all things considered. especially those of us who didn’t turn out to be photographers.

wendy mogel advocates letting your children be what they are, and encouraging them for it. seems like sound advice. i would only caution (based on limited, anecdotal experience as a non-parent) that i do sometimes see parents pushing their children towards doing what they’re good at, even if they’re not too interested in those things. children will stumble through things, they will fall down, they will hurt themselves, they will make mistakes, they will develop regrets. they will. there’s not much a parent can do to prevent that, and often i’d imagine a disservice is being done when such attempts at prevention are made. then again, adults do the same things. is it too cliche to say that our character is often defined by our failures? yeah, somewhat cliche. still. . .

it seems my mother has appointed me the unofficial, implied future custodian of the photo archives of the family. there really is nothing more sacred to her than the giant stash of photos overflowing a box in her living room. most days when i visit my mother i return home with envelopes full of things. newspaper clippings, usually – she loves newspaper clippings – but sometimes the envelopes are full of really amazing things.

last week i returned with two envelopes older than myself. they were full of negatives by mary ellen mark.

in the spring of 1972, a year before i was born, mary ellen pitched a story to life magazine on my mother. at the time my mother was managing carly simon and diane keaton. she had recently left her post as the first female executive at playboy. she was in charge of booking entertainment for all the playboy clubs across the country. during this time, she tells me, oscar peterson taught her about jazz, and she briefly dated gerry mulligan. apparently i was very nearly the child of mort sahl instead of bill gerber.

for one reason or another, as so often happens in magazines, even almost forty years ago, the story never ran. for one reason or another, my mother ended up with two big envelopes of negatives shot by mary ellen mark. negatives in yellowed old sleeves, with no proof sheets attached, just a log sheet from the photo department at LIFE magazine, a small piece of photo history itself. yellowed, old envelopes of the history of my family. i don’t know why or how these negatives ended up in my mother’s possession rather than in mary ellen’s archives. i keep meaning to ask her, but somehow always forget.

i’ve been looking at this collection of old negatives, angry at myself for trading away my darkroom years ago. the sleeves are so yellowed it’s hard to make out what’s on the film without removing it, and even though i’ve handled countless thousands of bare negatives over the last fifteen years these somehow seem different. like i don’t want to disturb them, maybe. it feels like even though they’ve been sitting in a filing cabinet in my parent’s house for more than thirty years they somehow don’t – or shouldn’t – belong to me.

this month sees the magazine cover debut of my adorable and chubby niece, willamina. i got an assignment to photograph harvey karp, a pediatrician and author of the “happiest baby” series of books and DVDs. it’s all about the five S’s, people. (swaddling, side/stomach positioning, shushing, swinging and sucking) harvey teaches parents how to calm crying babies, which in turn calms frazzled parents.

we wanted a baby for the shoot, but harvey’s own son was 27 years old. that wasn’t exactly the right visual, obviously. luckily having recently become an uncle i was able to provide a baby, and spend some quality time with my niece as well. my sister-in-law (see below) got a free instructional DVD, too.

many years ago when i was working for greg heisler i remember seeing a time magazine cover up on the wall of the studio. he had photographed his own daughter for it and that always struck me as a really great thing. this isn’t quite the same, but it’s a start. hopefully there will be many more in the future.

below are the layouts used in the magazine (i tease my brother that willa looks like kuato from total recall in that cover picture, all scrunched up and wrinkled!) as a bonus there’s willa with her mother in a test shot, and with her charming and talented uncle, as well (thanks to paul). as an extra special bonus, a short video of corporal bennett singing a cowboy lullaby about pooping. you’re welcome, internet.

my baby niece’s first visit to pasadena on the occasion of milo’s birthday. willa’s already been on her first magazine cover (more on that in a future post), and i’m sure she’ll be in many pictures still to come.