Why I take the photos I do...

I remember always having the desire to be creative, to be a painter or photographer. My parents were never supportive of my wanting to take art classes, in spite of the fact that my father had spent his early years working in a photography studio, and was never without a camera, and his brother, my uncle made a very good living as an abstract impressionist painter. Another of my uncles made a living from photography. It was my family’s desire for me to be a businessman, whatever that meant. In reality, it meant I would follow in my father’s footsteps and join the family business as he had done.

One night sitting at the Friday dinner table, my father informed me that I would start working in the family business on Monday, as he had fired an employee and there was an opening for me. I was in college, I didn’t want that. But as the good son, I would continue my morning school schedule, and then commute to work afternoons in “the business.” Good bless them, they were children during the Great Depression and lived through the rationing of World War Two. They saw a career in art or photography as not as lucrative as owning and succeeding in a profitable business. In some ways, I bought into it.

You find yourself in a place and you make it work. You have successes and it feeds one’s need to attain a higher goal. I met a girl, got married, and began raising a family. My first wife Shevawn saw my frustration and desire to “take pictures” and gave me my first 35mm camera for my birthday. I was excited and took pictures of everything I encountered. We had just had our first daughter Kelly, and she became the subject of countless pictures.

It was in her, I began seeing things through the lens that moved me. It was all film back then, and once the shutter had been pushed you had to wait for the film roll to be processed and returned. I would anxiously wait until I could pick up my pictures. Sometimes the roll of film was over or underexposed, and without a darkroom of my own, I virtually had no control over the end results. Honing my shooting skills was an urgent need. I continued to shoot pictures, as I began to see better results.

One Sunday morning while my wife was still sleeping I got up and fed Kelly. She was sitting in her high chair with the subtle morning light illuminating her face. I grabbed my camera and shot a whole roll of film as she smiled, frowned, and sat apathetically to what I was doing. The pictures were amazing and still to this day are some of my favorites, ever. The setting wasn’t perfect, the background and framing were not thought out or perfect, but the light that washed Kelly’s face was amazing.

Until then I was just pointing my camera and shooting, more focused on the “bigger picture”...the event, rather than looking and waiting for the subtleties before I hit the shutter.

I had taken over the bulk of the sales responsibilities in our family business, which brought me to many different neighborhoods in Chicago and the metropolitan area. One of those neighborhoods was Skid Row, now known as the West Loop. The businesses along Madison Street were customers of mine and Skid Row was where the alcoholics whose families had abandoned them lived and drank, passing out in the flophouses and on the streets. It was a busy business area with many foodservice equipment companies, light manufacturing, and warehousing companies. But with all the hustle and bustle in this neighborhood were the men and women who suffered from alcoholism and everything that came from it.

One Saturday afternoon, I dropped my wife and daughter Kelly at the beach and headed to Skid Row with my camera. I shot a couple of rolls of film featuring the men and the few women who resided there, hidden and ignored by society at large. It at first appeared easy to shoot pictures of those passed out on the curb, but in some way, it seemed sad to take advantage of these desperate human beings for my own desire to “take a picture.” There was a lack of humanity and ignoring the bigger problem that was right in front of me. I began engaging these men and women, offering some a few bucks, but speaking to any of them I was taking pictures of. Some of them had seen me calling on my customers and we talked about simple things. A few were drunk and angry, throwing things at me, others spoke of how they arrived in this place and how they missed parts of their past lives.

After I got the pictures back from the photo lab, I saw how the images progressed from pictures shot from a safer distance to ones where you could see the sadness and desperation on their faces. I remembered the conversations, some of which I still remember, 40 years later.

This experience added to what I looked for in a photograph. My wife Shevawn and I continued growing our family and I continued to shoot pictures of our children. Our children. Kelly, PJ, Mary-Kate, and Clare taught me to capture emotion, sadness, joy, vulnerability, intimacy, and the human condition more than anything I could ever have expected.

A few years ago I had begun scanning old negatives, converting these images into digital files, and editing them. The Skid Row series was one of them. I was reminded of that day many years ago before alcohol treatment centers dried up the skid rows. Families were no longer throwing their fathers, mothers, uncles, etc out on the streets. They were taking them to treatment centers. The images I took were powerful and a part of history. I posted them on my website.

One afternoon, a man emailed me and asked if we could discuss a few pictures he found on my website, and could he call me? I was intrigued. We talked. He was part of a production company that was doing a PBS program about Old St. Patricks Church. He said my pictures depicted the West Loop and its prior history as Skid Row. He said they were attempting to show how the growth of Old St. Patricks Chuch was a reflection of the surrounding neighborhood and my images were a perfect reflection of the desperation once found in the area.

About this time, my second wife Susanne and I had bumped into an old friend of hers. He was a musician and invited us to come to see him and his band play at Fitzgeralds. Of course, we ventured out to see the band. I didn’t bring my camera. I had only attempted to take pictures of one band before this and really didn’t give it much of a thought at the time.

The band was great. We began following Pete Special and Yo Mamas Boys...and I brought my camera.

From that first time, listening to the band, looking through the lens as the music rang in my ears, I felt at home. That was the beginning. Every weekend we would catch a gig of Pete Special and Yo Mamas Boys. We became friends with the band and the relationship between me, the band, the music became more intimate. Other bands followed.

I knew my images were different from many of the other music photographers. I wasn’t interested in just standing in front of the stage, chronicling the musicians by taking wide-angle shots or just showing a player, playing. There are a lot of photographers who do that well, many times better than me. I need something more personal, more intimate. I wanted to show the emotion on their faces. I loved seeing a moment of pause, or vulnerability and capturing it. Again, it was back to what I learned photographing my children. In most instances, a guitar player is simply a guitar player, unless he does something spectacular, raising his guitar in a unique or showmanship manner, but what is his face telling us, about him/her? I patiently wait until a particular quality of light washes over the lead singer’s face, the glances each musician offers his bandmates, or the contortions on the face of a guitar or keyboard player as he plays a particular riff. My images are far more focused on the “musical image” as a portrait of a musician. Those are the moments I relish capturing.