LXXIV, OR THEREABOUTS
Through his nightmare vision
He sees nothing, only well
Blind with the beggar’s mind
He’s but a stranger, he’s but a stranger to himself—Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi
By MICHAEL PERKINS
I’VE SCRIBBLED MUCH IN THESE PAGES OVER THE YEARS about the challenge of doing something photographers both big and small do zillions of times per day, with widely varied results; attempt a self-portrait that actually tells the truth.
Knowing the kind of entertaining liar I can be at times, I always mistrust my results, as, when it comes to self-knowledge, I may be the ultimate “unreliable narrator” available for making an image of myself that is honest. Not that I haven’t tried. As decades of birthdays have come and gone, I’ve posed myself in both formal and casual settings, in search of some elusive quality of…. authenticity?……only to wind up feeling like, oh, hell, I’ll get it right next year…..
This time out, this February 8th, I saw the task differently, as I have just spent several months trying to regroup from a series of nerve injuries which included my forearms, a condition that made simple tasks like opening a pickle jar seem herculean. The temporary loss of strength and fine motor function in my fingers was especially depressing, since it wrecked havoc with my ability to operate a camera with any real degree of control. Suddenly, my artist father’s old teachings about hand-eye coordination came back to me in heartbreaking echoes. What if that linkage between what I could see and what I could execute were to remain forever severed?
And so, with mere days to spare before turning seventy-four, for me to actually get 99% of that back….well, it certainly clarified the terms of any birthday selfie I might normally have planned. No big costume changes, no symbolic props, just a simple document that my eye and my hand were back on speaking terms. No other kind of image seemed to make sense; I was crawling out of a hole in which normally conjoined parts of me were not connecting, and there could be no other visual depiction of that reconciliation than documenting the re-establishment of that link. Life, like photography, is often a game of inches, with all of us struggling to have our grasp exceed our reach, and when your fingers occasionally close around those goals, you’ve snatched the greatest treasure in life.
JOE COOL VS THE TIME MACHINE
By MICHAEL PERKINS
ONE OF PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD AVEDON’S MOST PERSONAL (and most controversial) projects involved the documentation of the deterioration and death of his beloved father. In a similar vein, Annie Leibovitz chronicled her partner Susan Sontag’s brave but ultimately unsuccessful battle with cancer. Both series are riveting and heartbreaking, truly valiant attempts by artists to face the most terrifying aspect of life, namely its end. I admire both works, as I do many others that traffic in the same aims.
But I just can’t bring myself to photograph my own father (who turns ninety at this writing) in that way. It’s not that I lack the courage. Or the curiosity. I might even possess the clinical detachment it would require. But if photography has meant anything to me, it’s been about focusing on what’s most important. And the impending end of Dad’s life is of no importance, especially if compared to the quality of the life he has lived. I just can’t make despairing pictures of him. Not on purpose, anyway.
Technically, I could easily record tender, textured studies of how fragile his marvelously gifted artist’s hands have become. I could dwell endlessly on the inexorable appetite of time in robbing him of his balance, his eyesight, even, occasionally, his memory. But while any of those factors might produce pictures that were poignant, even eloquent, they would not be true to the spirit of the things that have animated and excited him over a lifetime. Ideas. Passions. Projects. A love of every manifestation of the artistic impulse, from the avalanche of books that littered every corner of our house to the lazy summer Sundays when he and I would lay on a sheet on the living room floor near the box fan, put My Fair Lady on the hi-fi, and be transported to 1910 London. Life is certainly, to a degree, about setbacks. But it’s also about being indomitable. Yes, that’s it. I’ve slung a lifetime of compliments in Dad’s direction, but indomitable is the word that finally sums him up. Hemingway once said that a man can be destroyed, but not defeated. God knows I’ve been around to see the world take a whack at accomplishing the former process. Gladly, I have never witnessed the latter. The trips down to the canvas don’t count. The journeys back up from the canvas do.
My Father, Summer 2018.
The image seen here began as an experiment with a particular art lens of mine. It’s based on selective focus, which means that you create pictures that actually conceal and much as they reveal. That means a less-than-reliable rendering of aged skin, a gauzy interpretation of the harder textures of aging. As for the sunglasses, while jaunty, they are not an attempt by the Chief to be cool but rather a very needful protection against over-loading his eyes with harsh light. And still, the overall affect, at least to me, is relaxed, comfortable. In this picture, I see no Sick Old Man. I see (or choose to see, maybe) an update on the dashing blockade runner I grew up with. The borderline shy smile, the posture of someone recalling a really good story. It’s the central nugget of his personality, which survives intact to this day, even if the machine that carries it around throws more cogs than it used to.
Photographs of such a man have to be resilient, even defiant. I grew up with too many instances of his quoting Dylan Thomas’ exhortation to “rage, rage, against the dying of the light” to snap pictures of him as weak or downhearted. And, of course, the man who loved that poem still bubbles up, even in conversations that are mostly about trouble or turmoil. Earlier this week, to change the subject from Time’s latest assaults on him and Mother, I mentioned that I had sent my sister “something you can use on your birthday.”
A pause, then:
“That’d be the motorcycle, right?”
“Yes”, I said, laughing with gratitude and relief, ” but I didn’t pop for the sidecar. I thought it would be too showy.”
Joe Cool was still on the job. And as for that Time Machine thing, you can take it and stick it.
Happy Birthday Daddy/Dad/Pop/Poppa/Daddy
thenormaleye 