Introduction: How It All Started

Featured Photo: “Pink Lamp with Flowers” Memphis, Tennessee—1971

I got my first camera in the summer of 1970, when I was 11 years old—a Polaroid One-Step. It might have been a present from my parents, but I prefer to believe I bought it with my own money—hard-earned cash that I made delivering newspapers and mowing lawns.

With my Polaroid camera, I could take a picture, pull out the tab from the instant film pack to access the layered photo paper and chemicals, wait about two minutes for it to develop, and then carefully peel back the layer with the chemicals to view the image I had just captured. It was nothing short of a miracle, or so I thought at the time. I guess I still do.

That was the beginning—my love of photography—the technique, the artistry, the images, the memories. Looking through the lens of a camera, I saw the world in a different way. I could frame a subject—cutting out the extraneous visual “noise”—to capture only what really mattered. Photography helped me focus on what was important or grand or beautiful or poignant.

The Featured Photo, which I fondly refer to as “Pink Lamp with Flowers,” was taken at our home in Memphis, Tennessee during the first winter after I got my camera. We had a formal living room with a fireplace, a piano, a couch, a few tables, and several chairs, including one chair set in a corner, beside a small table of wood and marble where my mom kept family pictures and other treasures. My photo—one of the earliest taken with my Polaroid—shows a circle of light emanating from an antique lamp set atop that corner table in our darkened living room. The lamp seems rather small within the photo’s stark, white borders, but the image has remained in my mind for more than 50 years.

Even so, when I opened my photo album—an olive-green, three-ringed binder that I had purchased long ago—to rediscover the picture and begin writing this inaugural blog post, I realized my memory was imperfect. The photo is not as remarkable as I remembered; it is not really a great photo. Still, the beauty of the subject remains, and the image reveals much of what I have tried to capture through my photography, both then and now.

One obvious aspect, of course, is that the photo is black-and-white. With my Polaroid One-Step, color photography came later, primarily because I could not afford the more costly color film packs. Given the monochrome picture, you have to trust me on the color of the lamp. I recall the glass was a rose-pink color, radiating a soft glow a short distance from the low-watt bulb.

The external, bumpy texture of the lamp’s hobnail globe certainly comes through in the image. But the lamp—which I mis-remembered as the main subject of the photo—is a bit off center and set low in the frame, with darkness above and below and all around. And then, there are the white flowers in a small vase beside the lamp, all set upon a cold, white-and-gray marble table-top—unseen in the shadows—in the corner of our living room.

Through the modern magic of digital photo editing, it is possible to take a picture of the picture, then zoom in and reframe the shot, and it becomes apparent that the photo is not quite in focus—a bit grainy.

I am not sure whether this was due to my own limited experience using a camera or the inherent limitations of the Polaroid lens. But still, the photo clearly reveals an interplay of light and shadow—brightness and dark—or in artistic terms, chiaroscuro. Light and darkness are often featured in my photos, and these characteristics also fuel my admiration of the amazing black-and-white photos of Ansel Adams…

^{© The Trustees of the Ansel Adams publishing Rights Trust.}

…my love for the art of Andrew Wyeth…

…my awe of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and other Dutch genre-painters…

…as well as for Monet and other Impressionists, with their interplay of light and dark and shimmering reflections on water.

As I looked again at my “Pink Lamp with Flowers,” I wondered whether it might bear an inscription. I carefully tried to take the photo out of its fragile sleeve in the old album, but the dried-out glue on the narrow, brittle hinge no longer held it in place; the paper hinge, clear plastic sleeve, cardboard backing, and photo all fell out together in my hand. Removing the photo from its now detached sleeve, I could still detect the faintly acrid smell of the Polaroid developing chemicals—even after the passage of five decades. When I turned the picture over, written on the back in my oldest sister’s meticulous hand were the words, “Flowers after Aunt Wee died, Jan. ’71.”

In my flawed memory, I thought the focal point was the lamp. But the real subject, centered low in the photo, was the flowers, given in memorial after the death—all too early—of our favorite aunt. She was my mom’s younger sister, Lily, who we called “Aunt Wee” because we were unable to pronounce her name correctly when we were still young kids. My memories of the photo were inextricably bound together with the sadness felt after Aunt Wee’s passing. Memories of the loss of a loved one.

While I had my old photo album open, I looked at a few other pictures from those early years. Thanks to my sister’s annotation on the backs of all the pictures, I saw that I had taken my Polaroid camera on our summer vacation in 1970 to Montreat, North Carolina—a place filled with cheerful memories—a destination very dear to our entire family.

In those early days, my parents could not afford to rent a house or stay in a hotel for our week-long retreat. Instead, that summer, we pitched our camper-tent in the usual spot at the Montreat campground. I snapped a photo of my family relaxing in front of our tent—mom, dad, my oldest sister, next-oldest sister, and brother—I was the “baby”; we were probably all thinking of the fun we would have during our stay.

I also recalled that occasionally, although not often, I would hand my camera to someone and allow them to take a photo. Shortly after taking the family snapshot, my next-oldest sister must have asked if she could take a picture of me; I was sitting tranquilly on a large rock near our tent at the campground. I can imagine back then—at that moment—I was happy and content…feelings my family has long associated with Montreat.

Looking back at my 11-year-old self, I can still feel the delight of being in that place, amidst the branches of the surrounding trees, and the lush leaves of the well-established rhododendron bushes. Although I did not take the picture, the result still captured those aspects of light, shadows, brightness, and dark—even as a subject, it seems, I sought out these qualities.

From my current vantage point—after 50 years of additional life-learning—I understand that traveling with a camera creates the opportunity to chronicle a journey as it unfolds, bringing another facet of joy to the experience at the time, and forming deeper connections with the subsequent memories. Later in my life, the prospect of traveling to more exotic destinations—with so many amazing things to see and do—would emerge and feature prominently in my ongoing love of cameras and photography.

(To be continued…)