this past winter brought two visitors to LA. in march i was able to meet up with tim archibald when he was down from san francisco just for the day. it was a brief visit, but even in the rush back to the airport tim was still gracious enough to let me take his picture on some random side street in culver city where thankfully no one caught us accidentally removing paint off a wall with gaffer’s tape. (i mean, really, that stuff isn’t supposed to do that.) i met tim many, many, many years ago and if you’re not familiar with his work do yourself a favor and check it out here. i’m consistently moved by his pictures and grateful for his advice and encouragement. in a world where photographers often look over their shoulder and jealously guard their secrets, tim is that rare kind of guy who is always open, welcoming and genuinely happy when the photo community as a whole does well.

good to see you tim, thanks.

while i’ve known tim almost as long as i’ve been a photographer myself, i’d only just met tony fouhse. i’d been an admirer of his pictures for some time, but seeing as how i don’t ever get up to ottowa, my actual connection with tony had previously only consisted of being the kind of facebook friends who didn’t really know each other at all. back at the end of february tony spent a couple weeks in LA on a personal project, lugging a 4×5 camera around south central. we were facebook friendly enough for him to ask me to recommend a local lab, and then beyond that to meet up for pizza in hollywood. tony’s blog, drool, is required reading as far as i’m concerned. the guy is whip-smart, dedicated, and just crazy enough to do brilliant work. while he’s not at all responsible for my lens burning out while i tried to take his picture, i’m going to go ahead and blame him anyway. i know he’ll understand.

thanks, tony.

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: one of the (many) good reasons to live in a place like LA is that if you just wait long enough everyone you actually want to meet will come through town eventually.

lately most of the things i do that seem to work out do so in no small part because of the influence, assistance and efforts of paul. for nearly every picture i publish there’s a similar shot with paul in it, standing in place of the final subject. here are a collection of those, from recent shoots and long misplaced scraps of pixels on distant corners of old hard drives.

today is paul’s birthday, so this post is in honor of all those things that happen behind the scenes. it is very likely he will be horrified by these, so in that case i apologize in advance. thanks, paul, for always making me seem like i know what i’m doing.

visit cpl. bennett here.

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.

going through some of my mother’s files tonight i found this proof sheet, labeled december 10th, 1963. ten years before i was born. the man in some of the shots with her looks like my uncle howard. i asked my mother who took these pictures, since there isn’t a credit anywhere, and nothing written on the back of the contact sheet. she says they were taken in chicago but she can’t remember exactly who the photographer was, though suspects it could be victor skrebneski. i should try to find victor and see if he’s still got the negatives!

growing up our house was filled with photographs. my mother took endless snapshots herself, most involving my brother and myself, and at least one of our many pets. there were photos scattered around by mary ellen mark, richard avedon, annie leibovitz, albert watson, lynn goldsmith and many others. most of them were of my mother’s clients. most of them i ignored when i was very young, thinking it just another part of my parent’s work, same as the phone calls that used to interrupt us during dinner. i sometimes think that my family sort of set me up to be a photographer – or, at the very least, to be the kind of photographer i am. they were all essentially freelance, there was always a home office. there was never any “going home” from work. your work was part of your life, and vice versa. spillover was absolute. this seemed normal to me, and as i’ve been a professional photographer for almost fifteen years now, it still does. i make that long 25 foot commute to my office every morning and most days i start work (emailing, photoshop, filing, etc) before i even eat breakfast or shower or even really wake up fully. usually i go to sleep late at night because i notice that letterman is over, or i’m falling asleep at my desk. work is life, life is work, photographs are important. these are things my parents taught me, even if they didn’t really mean to.

when i started to take photography seriously my mother stopped taking so many pictures herself (a major left turn for me in college, as someone who was gearing up to be either a professor, a writer, a rock star or a chef – and never displayed any artistic talent whatsoever before a camera was dropped in my hands on a whim). the unspoken agreement was that it was now left up to me. besides, the whole digital thing didn’t jive too well with her. my mother and high technology are uncomfortable with each other.

everyone in my family complains loudly and regularly about the mess of papers and piles of pictures in my mom’s office. but for every complaint there are a dozen thirty-year-old snapshots that not a single one of us would want to throw away. they’re all piled haphazardly in a giant bowl in her living room, the order rearranging every time someone goes through them. there are even old wallet size photos of my great-grandparents in there. this bowl is a family treasure, truly, and every time i look through it i lament that one aspect of digital photography: will anyone have a giant bowl of snapshots in twenty years? with everything being created and archived in pixels, i’m afraid we’re all missing out on the simple analog pleasure (and surprise) of finding out something about our families and the people who matter to us that we otherwise might have forgotten.

this is not a luddite rant. i’m a great believer in the merits of digital photography. i use digital cameras and love computers (while still being wary and uncomfortable with excessive retouching) and am a technophile if anything. but i might feel a bit better about it all still if everyone – or maybe even just me – had the wherewithal to make small prints of everything, too, and just throw them in a bowl somewhere.

images are valuable things – and sometimes they’re most valuable as things you can touch.

thanks, mom.

it’s long overdue but i’ve taken a step into the 21st century (of the internet) finally. with many sincere thanks to the efforts and skills of bill smith who as usual went above and beyond any call of duty to pull this thing together. so please go visit the new and improved, shiny and sleek www.msgphoto.com. now with easier navigation, much larger photos, and a general sense of professionalism that heretofore only existed for me in person. really. so, my art director friends, polish up your checkbooks, click the above link and get ready to give me those big time gigs. thanks very much.

i was very sad to hear today that william claxton died over the weekend of congestive heart failure. he was eighty years old. claxton took one of my favorite photos of all time (above), of chet baker and helima in 1955. i’ve always loved this picture, have seen it in galleries from time to time, and it’s the only photo i have ever seriously considered purchasing. every time, though, i made some excuse not to do it. when i first fell in love with the picture over a decade ago, i think it was $1500. at the time i was just unable to do it. hell, i couldn’t even afford to have a photo framed, let alone blow fifteen hundred bucks on one. i saw it again recently, not six months ago, and the price had shot up to around ten grand. i was kicking myself then for not getting it at $1500.

i’ve actually met claxton on two separate occasions. the first time was at a jon brion show at cafe largo on fairfax. i was sitting with marvin etzioni and some guy who looked kind of like colonel sanders came over to say hello and marvin introduced me. it was loud in the club and i couldn’t hear a word anyone said, so i just smiled and shook his hand. later on i realized it was william claxton.

the second time was at an american heart association fundraiser at UCLA. claxton was there and this time i got to talk to him for a few minutes. he had an implanted defibrillator and he told me about how it scared the hell out of his assistants. apparently the defib went off one day when he was helping them move cases around, and after that they wouldn’t let him lift anything heavy. he seemed to find it all funny. he was warm and personable, and i was really glad to meet him officially even though i’m sure he’d never remember it.

i remember, also, living in echo park and seeing claxton’s photo of art pepper from 1956. pepper was standing on a steep hill that cratered and went back up in the distance. i have no direct confirmation of this, but i’m pretty sure that was baxter street, right around the corner from the bungalow where i lived, and i felt good driving up and down that street everyday, knowing a piece of photographic and jazz history took place there.

in the 60s claxton really defined the visual look of west coast cool jazz. his pictures of chet baker not only made claxton famous, i think they made chet even bigger than he could’ve become otherwise. claxton’s photos were always flooded with window light and felt soft and vulnerable and cool. he even made steve mcqueen look vulnerable sometimes, and that must’ve taken some doing.

here’s an LA times article from today, talking about claxton.

last week our fair city of angels was graced with the presence of jonathan saunders, who brought a shotgun with him. ignoring the fact that we’re a bunch of bleeding heart liberals out here, he somehow managed to convince a few of his photographer friends to travel to sylmar and shoot at fluorescent pink clay targets. i abstained from handling shotguns, but was happy to watch jonathan and joe toreno have at it (below).

not typically known for his good cheer, jonathan was downright gleeful handling a shotgun, so that was nice to see. he hit the first two targets he shot at which is good enough for me to remain impressed. really, the best angle to photograph from would be right in front while he’s shooting but i’m not that brave yet. maybe next time. i managed to pocket one of the empty shells as a souvenir, though.

later in the week we went bowling. i haven’t bowled that badly in twenty five years. but thanks to jonathan for hanging out, and for providing entertaining stories about people i kind of know. it’s a weird world out there.

so i was at a wahoo’s in burbank a couple weeks ago getting some lunch and i happened to come across a copy of LA citybeat with my lili haydn cover on it. this was surprising because the issue came out in april, and the copy left on the stand here was in perfect condition. it’s always nice to just happen across these things because i rarely get to see how my pictures actually end up in print. i only have a handful of clients who take the time to send me tearsheets (thanks, guys) and mostly what i end up seeing are PDFs, instead.

so the surprise came when i opened up to the table of contents and saw the cover credit above. wow, that was really nice of them. actually, it was really nice of the art director, matt ansoorian. so yeah, thanks, matt. i’m glad you liked the picture.

it senses other cameras flashes and projects it’s own image onto whatever they’re shooting. of course, they don’t find out about it ’til later. for more understandable info, look at gizmodo. or just look at youtube.

late last night paul sent me a link to a story about the marines involved in the haditha massacre. it seems they have all been cleared, except for one.

as a bit of background, this is from the NPR website:

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the leader of a Marine squad that killed 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha, faces a military hearing Thursday at Camp Pendleton. He is charged with 18 counts of unpremeditated murder in the largest criminal case to emerge from the war in Iraq.

On the morning of November 19, 2005, as Sgt. Wuterich’s squad approached Haditha, a roadside bomb killed a fellow marine. Wuterich said the dismembered body is a sight he will never forget.

About 100 yards away, Wuterich, who had never been in combat before, saw a taxi with five young men in it. In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, Wuterich said the men were ordered out of the car and “as they were coming around, they started to take off. So I shot at them.”

this is staff sergeant frank wuterich, with his daughter, talia, at their home in camp pendleton, california. it was shot on september 5th, 2006, and was one of the strangest and most interesting assignments i’d ever been involved in. the story was for TIME magazine, and they seemed to have an exclusive on it. the assignment was strange because of the exclusive – i found out about the shoot maybe a week before it happened, and was instructed to tell no one any details about it whatsoever. it was a big story, and breaking news, and the more excited i got about it the harder it was to refrain from talking about it. i started to feel like i was in a spy movie. i couldn’t tell my friends or family or my girlfriend anything about where i was going or what i was doing, not until it was published. when i was processing the pictures after the shoot i had to hide them from people so no one could know the subject matter until the magazine came out. we were sneaking into the base, so i couldn’t even bring an assistant on the shoot.

i drove down to san diego, picked up the writer at a hotel and went over to camp pendleton. we had a cover, in case the security guard at the gate stopped us. we were officially going to see someone else. the military wasn’t too keen on wuterich talking to the press. but i drove up to the gate and even though i had a big car full of gear they just waved us on through. i guess we got lucky. he was living in a house on base, with his wife, marisol, and two daughters. marisol was pregnant at the time. frank was supposed to be out of the military at that point, but they were keeping him in just until they figured out what to do with him. i guess two years later it’s still ongoing.

i was really surprised to find a relatively normal looking house, and even more surprised to see that it was just frank and his family there to talk to us. no lawyer, no official military liaison. still, he was expressly forbidden by his lawyer to discuss specifics of that day in haditha, so instead we got to talk to him as a human being, not as a soldier. it’s difficult to reconcile any of the details of what happened in iraq with this guy i saw sitting on the couch in front of me. he looked like any normal, clean cut guy in his mid twenties. he played guitar. he liked rock and jazz, he was an honor student in high school. he loved his wife and his kids. he joined the military in part, he said, because he wanted to be in the band.

now it seems that wuterich has filed a lawsuit against congressman murtha for libel and defamation. murtha was instrumental in bringing the haditha massacre to the public consciousness. the charges against wuterich now stand at 12 counts of voluntary manslaughter. this is all brings to my mind the idea of the craziness of war – how it’s all about semantics. it’s okay to kill people, just so long as you do it according to the rules we make up. and if you don’t follow the rules just make sure nobody finds out. then again, i don’t know how these soldiers do it. regardless of your politics, whether you think we should be in this war or not, when you look at the situation it’s hard not to view it as an even tie for last place. is anybody actually winning here? in a situation that’s designed where you have to kill people to progress, is there a way not to come in last? you’re sending kids off into hell, they’re scared out of their minds and miserable, they generally don’t speak the language and everything probably looks like a threat. if ever there was a lose-lose situation, this has got to be it.

when TIME was laying out the original article they were initially going to go with my first select – the B&W shot below. it was to run a full page, no text, and i was really thrilled. it was great space, a great layout and i was really pleased with the picture. it had a quiet that i quite liked. then the editors (not the photo dept.) started second-guessing the picture. the writer said “a marine would never lower his head” and they started worrying that maybe the picture made wuterich seem guilty. maybe it made too strong a statement. i kind of thought that was the point (not an assumption of guilt, but of making a statement of some kind), and tried to argue it, but eventually the photo was swapped out for an alternate of him looking straight ahead. it was okay, but nowhere near as good in my opinion. still, the story got good space in the magazine, which is always satisfying, and it was a unique experience to be involved in. my sincere thanks, as always, go to martha bardach at TIME, a continual champion for photographers.

some relevant links:

the original news story corporal bennett sent me that prompted this post.

the original TIME profile of wuterich in which my pictures appeared.

the wikipedia entry on frank wuterich.

frank wuterich’s home page.

wuterich on 60 minutes – this is long, but it’s really worth it.

an NPR news story on wuterich.

the haditha story broke when an eyewitness to the attacks reported what had happened. this is a youtube video interview with one of the eyewitnesses.

(the opinions expressed in all these links are, of course, not necessarily reflective of our beliefs here at msgphoto.com. if you have a problem with them, blame them, not me.)