A Charmed Life

 

My first camera was plastic. It was gray and aqua, the grand prize in the raffle at a Uniontown Jewish Community Center fundraiser sometime in the late 1960’s. I can still see it; I can remember how it felt in my hands. It came with flashbulbs, a roll of film, and an instruction booklet. I spent the rest of the evening sitting on a metal chair in the corner of the auditorium reading it – possibly the last camera instruction booklet I ever read. The following morning I began my photography career.

 

With my father’s help I carefully loaded the film, and I was off. I photographed my house, the family car, and my friends in their backyards – always obeying the instruction booklet’s rules…I kept the sun behind me, and didn’t let trees grow out of anybody’s head. Then I was ready for the big assignment; Ronald McDonald was making a special appearance on his Flying Hamburger at the local McDonald’s. I climbed the hill to the shopping center along with my neighborhood gang of boys. An absolute mob had gathered in the restaurant parking lot - Ronald McDonald was a major celebrity.

 

It was practically impossible to see the famous clown, as a crew unloaded his magic vehicle from inside a tractor-trailer, but with my camera, I thought nothing of moving to the front of the crowd. The “Flying Hamburger” turned out to be little more than a modified golf cart, with a fiberglass sandwich bolted on top. I dutifully shot all the action as he sped back and forth, waving, and spewing leaded gasoline exhaust over his fans and their lunches. It was a great day.

 

That night, again with my father’s help, we rewound the film, and unloaded the camera. I don’t know where the film went from there, possibly into the mail, perhaps to a local camera shop, I’m not sure. All I know is that it seemed to take forever to get anything back. One day my father came home and handed me a cardboard envelope – my first photos had finally arrived. He watched as I tore it open and spilled the pictures and negatives onto the kitchen table. I was devastated. Nothing looked the way I remembered it – everything seemed far away, soft and milky, and in the bottom corner of each photo, there was nothing at all…just a dull mist.

 

Of course now, looking back, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The camera was plastic after all. The strap was plastic. The lens was plastic. Nothing was light tight. Light spilled in from the moment the film was loaded. What did I expect? But what did happen that day, as I sat there in disbelief, looking at my pictures, and shaking my head, didn’t happen to me…it happened to my father. He saw that I was actually disappointed in something. Back then my parents were used to seeing me get duped. I was constantly falling for some scheme, saving box tops or proof of purchase seals, and mailing in quarters to buy some item that appeared to be six feet high in the comic book ad, but was in reality more like six inches when I finally received it. And every time I got taken, I just shrugged it off. I moved on, and set myself up to be fooled again. But this time it was different. I wanted those photos to be good, and I was truly let down.

 

My father picked up on that. Soon another camera appeared. Not brand new, but not junk either. It had a glass lens, and adjustable

shutter speeds and apertures. It was a real camera, and I took to it, documenting the silliness that always seeped into our family gatherings. I went through an instamatic phase and a Polaroid phase. I marveled when flashbulbs were replaced with flashcubes (“Really? Four photos in a row?”). Greater still was my first battery powered flash – a huge step forward. My sister Pauly gave me a Canon TL, and I was good enough with it to shoot for my junior high school yearbook. I used it in senior high as well. That gig came with a permanent hall pass signed by the principal himself, and a spot on the sidelines of any sporting event. I carried that Canon with me when I went away to college. I had dreams of becoming an illustrator when I started at the Maryland Institute College of Art, but an instructor named Richard Kirstel had other ideas. Under his mentorship I developed what can best be described as my style. One of my first assignments with Kirstel was to take an inanimate object, and photograph it as to make it sacred. I found an old bubblegum machine in the house on Saint Paul Street where I was living with a group of strangers. I photographed it in traffic, on a rooftop with the city behind, and sitting on the front steps, next to one of my housemates, Stephen Braun. Braun was a reporter at the Baltimore News-American. He would sneak home from work at lunchtime every day, pull a bottle of illegal Stolichnaya Vodka from our freezer, and pour us drinks. His example cemented my resolve to someday work for a newspaper.

 

The Canon had its limitations, and almost on cue, my brother AJ, working in a Michigan photography studio, presented me with my first professional grade camera, a Nikon F2. It was a tank, a workhorse. With it I sharpened my documentary skills, photographing around the racetracks at Laurel Park and Pimlico. That was also when I picked up my enjoyable, albeit expensive habit of horse wagering. Every photography major at the Maryland Institute was required to present a senior thesis – an intense, one-year study on a single subject. Inexplicably, I chose the Baltimore City Fire Department…a topic about which I knew absolutely nothing. It was a serious leap of faith by fire chief Peter J. O’Conner and his public information officer Patrick Flynn. They gave me a helmet, boots, turnout gear, and run of the department. This was right at the end of the era where a civilian could sign a waiver and ride on fire apparatus. I have no idea how I didn’t get killed. It was also the most extreme experience of my life, up to that point. I found myself standing in, and photographing, burning buildings, in the middle of the night, when I had been fast asleep, several blocks away, only a few minutes before.

 

No one gets anywhere by himself, I certainly had plenty of help. One big break came at the hands of my schoolmate, and fellow photographer, Barry Holniker. He was a year ahead of me at the Institute, and light-years ahead of me in talent. Even when we were in school, he was working as a staff photographer at the City Paper, Baltimore’s premier alternative newspaper. He, along with the only other photographer, Jennifer Bishop, shot every photo for every issue. Just as I was graduating, in 1982, the paper was experiencing tremendous growth, and popularity. The workload was greater than two photographers could handle, and Holniker thought I would be a good fit. He asked me to put together a portfolio, and I jumped at the chance to present it to editors Russ Smith, Phyllis Orrick, and their art director, Paula Handler. He was right, I was a good fit. They hired me on the spot. And so began a happy six-year relationship with the City Paper, and set me on the path to live what H.L. Mencken called, “The life of kings.” I worked alone a lot in those early days. I photographed a window washer who outlived several partners that fell to their deaths, the owners of a restaurant specializing in goat, and whatever creepy politicians the editors decided to beat up on that week. I don’t know which was worse, the ridiculous last-minute assignments, the completely unrealistic deadlines, or the rock-bottom wages, but I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it. Working for the City Paper was like being in on a big joke that was being played on everyone else in town.

After a few months, the editors teamed me up with a new City Paper writer named Mike Anft. He was a worldly son of Baltimore, and a battle-hardened former copyboy at the News-American. Our love of the city, in spite of its flaws, was common ground. Over the years we photographed and wrote about Baltimore’s climb and fall, as it would rot and burn and rise from its own ashes again. We had a ball. Our favorite targets were corrupt developers as they tried to fatten their wallets at the expense of stable neighborhoods, and exposing the ineptitude and buffoonery of Baltimore’s politicians. To this day I count among my finest work, features on the ruination of Baltimore’s waterfront, or the colossally stupid chain of events leading to the wholesale fish market’s move from the city. And still we had time to do “smaller” stories, meeting a tattoo artist, a fire-eater, and even an unmasked Baltimore Orioles mascot along the way. During those years I continued to photograph the Fire Department, and joined forces with another photographer, Frank Rehak, to create a full-scale documentary. We displayed our work at the City Hall Gallery, and when it became apparent there was enough interest in the subject to publish a book, Anft was the natural choice to write the text. Our book, “…In Service” was published in 1987.

 

Working at the City Paper and publishing the Fire Department book paid off, and in 1988 I got my dream job. The Baltimore Sun had an opening for a photographer in their marketing department and I was recruited. Fulltime newspaper jobs were never plentiful, and finding one was the brass ring. In one week I showed my photos, was interviewed twice, and offered the position. For 10 years I’d wake up in the morning and I couldn’t wait to go to work. THAT’S the definition of a great job. Just being in the building was an exhilarating experience. Back then the Sun published morning, evening, and Sunday newspapers. It was a 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year enterprise, employing hundreds of people, and the entire operation was under one roof. When you walked through the front doors, you could smell the ink. When the presses were running, the building shook. I loved it there.

 

I left the newspaper and turned freelance in 1999. The whole industry was changing and early retirement buyouts were commonplace. Leaving the best job I ever had was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but the allure of working for myself was too great. I didn’t think anything could be better than working for the Sun, but freelance is. My time is my own, I pick and choose my clients, and I can do my own work. I tracked down and photographed an actor who appeared in the worst movie ever made, I witnessed a breast cancer survivor confront her greatest fears, and I shot a nude woman in my backyard, as two city police officers chased a Royal Farms robbery suspect down the alley. What follow, are a selection of photos from my life’s work. A life behind the camera. A charmed life.

 

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