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.

dr. ken helps business executives be their very best through his company, the impact group. he seems to use speakerphone to do this sometimes. i photographed dr. ken in his home office in cheviot hills, where he was funny and gracious. at the end of the shoot his wife and son came in to see what was going on. the lights were already torn down and put away, but at ken’s request i took a couple quick snapshots of the family anyway. he was a good sport putting up with us, and i was happy to do it.

as i came back into the house to do one final looksee around to make sure nothing was left behind, dr. ken said “here, i want to give you something.” generally when people say that they want to give me a copy of their book or something. in this case dr. ken handed me a twenty dollar bill (see below) and said “lunch is on me today.”

i was kind of surprised, to be honest. i’ve never been tipped before! it never occurred to me that anyone would think to tip their photographer. thanks, ken.

in other news, photoshop thinks i’m a counterfeiter. the program won’t let you print money. in this case photoshop is almost exactly like professional photography.

every so often i get to photograph someone who surprises me with their graciousness. this could be because most people, when confronted with a camera, are not terribly gracious. but john had researched me, seem to know who i was (strangely), and seemed excited to be photographed.

he is the managing director of galen, a healthcare investment firm. i can only imagine this has given him the kind of life that is very far out of reach for most photographers. but like many people who do lucrative things at high levels, john is fascinated with taking pictures and seemed to have no limit to his curiosity. when you take pictures for a living it’s very common to come across people who say “man, i’d love to do that”. even though being an advanced hobbyist is fundamentally different (in mindset and approach) to being a professional photographer, i try to be encouraging when i hear people say that. i do my best not to think of all the things about the job i could grumble about. every job, no matter how glamorous or exciting it seems from the outside has its drudgeries and its difficulties. the truth is, of course, that’s it’s pretty damn great being able to take pictures for a living. sure, it’s not the best way to get rich, but sometimes you get to do really amazing things, meet really amazing people and every long once in a while you get to feel like you’ve done something important. well, i hope so, at least.

john and his wife, barbara, are rabid collectors of aboriginal art. this picture was taken inside the fowler museum at UCLA before the opening of an exhibit of their collection. you can see some of the paintings here. currently the paintings are being exhibited in new york through the end of the year.

john is one dapper guy. i make it no secret that my personal goal is to have grey hair, a white beard and a custom-tailored suit. that is just plain classy.

a couple months after our shoot i got this card in the mail from john. it’s so rare that i hear anything from subjects once the shoot is done, once the magazine is published. it’s rarer still to hear positive things – most people are uncomfortable with how they look, and i’m sure i don’t  hear from half of the people who actually hate their pictures. (to them, of course, i say: yes, your head really is that big and oddly shaped. sorry. blame your parents.)

anyway, thanks, john. i really appreciate it. you’re welcome to follow me around any time, of course, but maybe we should both aim higher in the personal-goal department?

i’ve said it before, the world is a small place when you’ve gone to crossroads high school.

at the beginning of the summer i got an assignment to photograph john wyatt. john is the director of the cinespia cemetery screenings at the hollywood forever graveyard. every summer weekend john projects classic movies onto the side of a giant mausoleum, and the delighted masses of hollywood lay blankets and picnic baskets out on the great lawns amidst the tombstones to take in the films. the last screening was this past weekend (rosemary’s baby, which seems like an appropriate movie to show in such a context).

so when i got the job i did what i always do, i called up the subject and introduced myself and said what i was calling for. john interrupted me and said, “yeah, man, i know. we went to high school together.” oh, right. i realized it as soon as he mentioned it. john was a year ahead of me. at the time we had the same hair, but no beards.

i just saw that cinespia ended for the summer the other day, and once again i kick myself for not having gone. it’s one of those things i’ve known about for years but somehow time always manages to slip past me. next year for sure. don’t let me forget this time, okay?

a few years back i had one other shoot at hollywood forever (of jerry stahl), but that was in the middle of winter and it was rainy and cloudy and dark. perfect cemetery weather. this time. . . middle of summer, it was near 100 degrees and bright sun. not the least bit creepy. oh well.

my thanks to john and to cpl. bennett as usual for the selfless assistance.

ruben is the CEO of propaganda global entertainment marketing. that means he’s responsible for you seeing in movies the things you desperately want but can’t afford (like a lamborghini, or robot cell phones). that means that ruben’s LA office is full of cool things that you desperately want but can’t have. like motorcycles, fake newspapers from gotham city, and an american flag made of 25,000 swarovski crystals. (okay, maybe i don’t want a motorcycle or a crystal flag, but it would have been great (in a geeky sort of way) to get a copy of the gotham city newspaper.)

ruben is the coolest guy in the room. especially if that room only contains cpl. bennett, ruben and myself. he has handmade italian sneakers. he has a custom painted macbook (blue, perhaps to match the sneakers). he rides around town on a motorcycle that transforms into a robot (well, with michael bay’s help, at least). he lives in switzerland. that makes him more neutral than you, at least, and possibly cooler than you.

i left ruben’s thinking seriously about purchasing custom made clothing, pondering why i wasn’t nearly as suave as i should be, and wondering if i could take better care of handmade italian sneakers than i could my $25 skechers. likely not. custom made shirts, though, there’s something to think about. especially when you’re me and nothing in a store actually fits you. also, pocket squares seem like an important thing that i’m missing. that’s just plain classy. i’ll have to look into that.

see the full article here, and my thanks to scott at businessweek for the gig.

when i arrived to photograph jan, she and her husband, rick, were taking care of their grandson, noah. rick was making tacos for the family, cooking expertly in a well-worn, well-loved cast iron skillet. it was a simple act, a simple day, but even talking to them for a few minutes i could tell that those simple things were not casually overlooked in this house. nine years ago jan was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. her chance of survival was plainly stated by her doctors: zero.  by the time they had discovered it the cancer had aggressively spread to her brain and liver.

surgery removed the tumors from her brain, but even after three rounds of chemotherapy the tumors in her lungs and liver remained. she was 47 years old. jan was being treated at cedars-sinai hospital (the hospital where i was born, coincidentally), and her doctors managed to get her in to the phase II clinical trial of a drug called iressa.

ultimately the drug was not approved for use in the US by the FDA. the trials failed to show effectiveness often enough, as only about 10% of patients responded to it. for jan lesser, though, it was a miracle pill. no more chemo. no more nausea. no more headaches, or weakness. just one pill a day. she said she felt better almost immediately. she went from having weeks or months to live, to being totally cancer free now for almost nine years. she still takes iressa, as it’s approved in the US only for patients on whom it’s already shown a positive result.

today jan feels good. rick feels good. noah has a grandmother. jan was one of only 27 people in that stage of the trial. she’s alive and well today because of a little luck mixed with a whole lot of research and science. sometimes no matter how many terrible things happen to us we still manage to find ourselves in the right place at the right time, despite it all.

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.

norma is my mother’s neighbor. she walked by while i was setting up in the alley to film my brother and his wife on father’s day. many people who walk by photo sets jokingly say “hey, you gonna take my picture, too?” i always answer yes to this question, and find that when you actually do it they become much less brave. i think the photo above is norma’s feeling on the picture-taking process. i can’t say i blame her. actually, these days, that expression sums up quite a bit for me.

though only a senior in college, stephen is already one of the flying karamazov brothers. more importantly he brings props to the shoot that light on fire. there are very few jobs i do that couldn’t be improved with something in the picture being on fire. or doused in liquid nitrogen, for that matter. i confess to seeking out liquid nitrogen every time i go to photograph someone at caltech.

i met stephen four years ago when he was a college freshman. at the time he was – as he is now – 6’4″ tall, and a juggler, and we were taking pictures in a room with an eight foot ceiling. no good. this time we reserved a room with the highest ceiling we could find, just to be safe – a theater on occidental’s campus. i saw this “KEEP CLEAR” sign backstage while we were loading in equipment, but we spent most of our time getting our standard juggling-bowling-pins action shots in front of the stage curtain. at the the very end of the shoot, just minutes before the stage managers were to come back and kick us out, stephen had the good sense to say “i have a torch“.

so did this shot really quickly, stephen squirting lighter fluid around with abandon, and trying not to get too close to the sprinklers. of course, he wanted to juggle the torch but i liked this better. maybe it’s the same reason i don’t like laughing pictures of comedians. too easy. he’s a really tall, kinda lanky and goofy, good-natured guy, and i like that he looks sort of badass in this shot.

well, as much of a badass as is possible, being a man in a skirt and bowtie.

the torch helps.

my thanks as always to cpl. bennett for his patient and knowledgeable assistance, and to dick anderson at oxy.

in the summer of 1998, in a small town in ohio, a 5 year old girl was killed, stabbed in the throat. anthony harris was twelve years old at the time, one of very few african american kids in town. after a couple weeks of searching for the girl’s killer, police arrested anthony and interrogated him. they used a technique meant for adults, meant to elicit confessions in cases where there was already significant evidence. it’s also commonly known that this technique can elicit false confessions in children. so anthony confessed. he was scared, confused and tired. but he wasn’t the killer.

the forced confession was all the evidence the prosecutor had against him, but it was enough. he was sentenced to prison where he spent two years waiting for his lawyers to overturn the conviction. the original prosecutor and judge remained convinced of anthony’s guilt despite acknowledging that the confession was coerced. but he was a free man, he rejoined his family, he went to high school. when he tried joining the marines his past was dug up and he was denied. a year later he tried joining the army and was again denied. in the meantime there was a civil suit ongoing. eventually this was settled for over three and a half million dollars. anthony’s name was cleared, finally. he joined the marines in 2006, has served one tour in iraq, and when i went to meet him he was expecting to head to afghanistan sometime in the near future.

i met up with anthony in his hotel room in san diego. he was on leave for the weekend, seeing a girlfriend, looking to buy a house with some of his settlement money. he didn’t talk much about the case, which i can understand. sometimes when you spend your whole life trying to put something behind you the last thing you want to do is keep explaining it to people. we set up the shots while anthony went to drive his girlfriend home, though somehow that short trip ended up taking him over two hours. ordinarily this kind of behavior annoys me, but really, there are some people who deserve to be cut a little slack. he’s got to be one of them, right?

my thanks to corporal bennett for his gracious assistance, and to the incomparable maggie soladay at the american lawyer magazine for picking a really unconventional shot for the opener. that’s really cool, maggie, and i very much appreciate it.

see the whole story here.