Numbah one son

Vinyl Freak, Oakland, June 2009.




My son is Zoolander. To photograph him is to be subjected to an array of gestures and facial expressions, each one more inauthentic than the next. We have tried to work around this minor inconvenience: he makes his faces, and I go nope ... nope ... nope ... maybe ... nope. Then I say "we're done," his face returns to neutral, then I take my shot.

I have photographed my son, Miguel, throughout the many stages and ever-changing hairstyles of his young life. One of my favorite photos of all time was taken at his high school graduation (left), an important milestone for him, but meaningful to me for having captured him as a young adult among the company of friends who have remained close to him through the years.

They say boys are easy, girls are hard. Maybe, maybe not. Miguel has an easygoing charm about him that he uses like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card to get himself out of trouble. He may annoy or frustrate, but one can't stay angry with him for long. Underneath his cultivated sophistication and fancy jargon, he is a naif with a good heart; distracted, yes; all over the place, yes. A work-in-progress, most definitely. But I'm convinced that in time he will attack life like the creatures in his beloved Monster Hunter, and triumph.

The picture on the left was taken in Greece in the island of Spetses. The villa on the hill is reputed to be the Villa Bourani in John Fowles' novel, The Magus. This picture was taken during a quest, aided by cryptic clues, to find the villa; it is a proof document of their successful search. In Fowles' novel, the villa is inhabited by an eccentric recluse who opens up a world of mysticism and mystery to the protagonist, and transforms his life forever.

The road to adulthood for Miguel is akin to finding Villa Bourani and discovering what it has in store for him. Like Spetses, it will be hot as hell, prickly, and may require body rolls on the dunes. But finding the villa can be a sweet moment, indeed. Now all he needs to do is get back on the boat and begin his new adventure.

All my children

Miguel and Zoe, Oakland, August 2009.

Collages

Cafe de la Presse, San Francisco, May 2007.

A photographer is confronted with a complex web of visual juxtapositions that realign themselves with each step the photographer takes. Take one step and something hidden comes into view; take another and an object in front now presses up against one in the distance. Take one step and the description of deep space is clarified; take another and it is obscured.
-- Stephen Shore

To this, add a reflecting surface, and the "web of visual juxtapositions" becomes even more complex. It can be anything: a window pane, a windshield, a granite wall. At the right angle of light, even a plastic book jacket could make Francis Bacon's image of Woodrow Wilson layer itself like magic over a child caught up in books.

Reflections can make visual collages that are the stuff of dreams. An airplane hovers over a bus that runs on a checkerboard street. Salt-and-pepper shakers are candle offerings borne by a woman's shadow. Door knobs turn a businessman into a cyborg. The Manhattan skyline materializes in a San Francisco street. A car crashes through a louvered window, but neither pedestrian nor saints care.

Creating order out of the mad jumble of things apparent and reflected is a puzzle whose solution oftentimes yields delightful surprises.

All in the family

Sleeping in, Rockridge, December 2008.



We call them "Kodak moments," those milestones in family life that demand to be recorded in pictures. The slogan is also a tribute to George Eastman, the man whose invention of the Kodak camera in 1888 brought photography out of the professional studio and into the eager hands of the public-at-large. Nowadays, a person simply has to reach for a cell phone to snap a picture. For better or worse, we are all photographers now, and nowhere will we find more trusting and accessible subjects than our own families.

Many photographers have found muses for their art within their own families; some of them in their wives and lovers. To name just a few: Eleanor to Harry Callahan, Georgia O'Keefe to Alfred Stieglitz, Charis to Edward Weston, Lella to Édouard Boubat. A beautiful woman named Yoko was the young bride and muse of Noboyushi Araki, Japan's most celebrated and prolific photographer. In his photo diary Sentimental Journey, the earliest of more than 300 books, Araki documented the intimate details of his honeymoon with Yoko, a journey that took a tragic turn when Yoko became gravely ill and died. This tragedy, the sexually charged journey into death, will remain with Araki for always and will be recurring themes in his work.


VIDEO: Araki on "Sentimental Journey"

The close ties that bind family members translate with ease into playful depictions of family life. Children and babies naturally play prominent roles in pictures just as they do in daily life. In John Willis' almost abstract portrait, we know his baby is a boy. Nicholas Devore's portrait of Niki, a hilarious meditation on genetics, is one of my favorite pictures of all time. The symbol of home casts a long shadow over Abelardo Morell's sleeping children. The daughters of Harry Gruyaert prove that they are truly a photographer's spawn as they carry on without a trace of self-consciousness, oblivious to dad's ever present camera. Silvan Lewin's classic family group portrait tips its hat to Diego Velasquez' painting, Las Meninas. In Anne Testut's beautifully choreographed bedroom tableau, even the family dog has entered the act.

The concept of family is so powerful that even though it is devoid of people, a still life of dirty plates and a half-empty casserole of fish stew (Mannfred Willman) suggests the boisterous presence of a family feasting.

Aging and mortality are equally common themes in family photographs. Sylvia Plachy's grandparents are captured in a bubbly, childlike moment, but many famous photographers have documented their loved ones in decline. In "The Machine," fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti photographed his brother's struggle with a blood ailment that ultimately claimed his young life. Annie Leibovitz took an intimate and unflinching look at her partner, writer Susan Sontag, as she battled cancer, a fight that she ultimately lost in 2004. After the Bath is part of a series of photographs by Jill Lynworth chronicling the last six months of her brother's life with cancer and its effects on her family.

Sometimes photographs are portents. In 1984 Doug DuBois took a picture of his father in the train station; less than a year later his father "walked between two cars of the moving train and was found six hours later lying between the east and westbound tracks."

Finally, death itself. In "Death of my Father," photojournalist Peter Martens takes a decidedly detached look at the lifeless body of his father as he lays at the foot of the stairwell.













Silvan Lewin, Portrait, 1993.
Anne Testut, Le Lit (The Bed), 1985.
Abelardo Morell, Laura and Brady in the shadow of our house, 1994.
Nicholas Devore III, Where Niki Got his Red Hair, 1986.
Harry Gruyaert, Saskia and Marieke, Malaucene, 1999.
Noboyushi Araki, From Sentimental Journey, 1971.
Manfred Willmann, Fish Soup, 1981.
John Willis, Mother and Child= 1, 1985.
Sylvia Plachy, Grandma and Grandpa, 1979.
Peter Martens, Death of my Father, 1986.
Jill Lynnworth, After the Bath, 1987.
Doug DuBois, My Father, Train Station, 1984.