Mentors
I was influenced by the usual cohort of street and documentary photographers when I began what would become a lifetime fascination—some might say obsession—with photography. Diane Arbus, Elliott Erwitt, Gary Winogrand, Josef Koudelka, to name a few.
But it was the homegrown—right in my backyard—photographers that have had the most influence on me. Their photographs, which I could hold in my hands, hang on my walls, and, most significantly, hear the stories of how, when, where, and why they were taken, inspired me and left me hungry to create my own lasting images.
I moved to Atlanta in the late 70s and began a career as a writer for a weekly newspaper but it was photography that drew me in and I constantly scanned the pages of the Atlanta newspapers for great images. Invariably, they would be taken by a handful of photographers, the best of them, in my opinion, was Louie Favorite. I was nervous when I eventually met him, but he put me at ease, leading to a lifetime friendship.
The image above he calls “Metaphor for Marriage.” A roll of 35 mm film contains 36 chances to get a photograph. While shooting a departing ship, Favorite had expended his luck when he saw this couple, looking in opposite directions from separate portholes like wondering eyeballs tethered to different brains. He raised the camera and clicked. That roll, for reasons of fate and fortune, contained a 37th frame and a brief moment of sad stillness was captured forever.
I traded my reporter’s notepad for a camera, and as Director of Photography at Emory University placed an ad for a photographer in the paper and interviewed dozens for the new position. I remember one candidate had worked as a photographer for a coroner. Interesting portfolio. But it was Marilyn Suriani’s work that resonated with me and I hired her.
She would become a collaborator, instigator, mentor and friend. We exhibited our work together in 1984 in the first exhibit either of us had, “Living Our Real Lives,” at Emory’s Schatten Gallery, displaying mirroring documents of Atlanta’s underside, from strip clubs to homeless shelters.
On a trip to Maine, Suriani found herself on a lonely, rocky, beach where a group of Mennonite women, seeing the ocean for the first time, stared off to the horizon. That one image contains within it stories limited only by the imagination of the viewer.
The first of this trio of influencers on my work was Dennis Darling, but he was the last that I met. I discovered his photography in a photo magazine as a teenager and the dark underside of life that he seamlessly moved in appealed to a rebellious streak and opened the door to possibilities that I would explore years later. His images depicted taboo subjects — neo-Nazis, the Klan, motorcycle gangs — but they also found the deepest empathy for the human condition, depicting a world teeming with life in the midst of abject poverty. This too would influence my future explorations.
In the circular magic of life, it happened that Darling was teaching photography in Atlanta and Suriani was one of his students. Through her, I met him, the photographer that had captured my imagination while thumbing through a photography magazine as a teenager. One of the images was of three motorcycle gang members, two men holding guns with their arms around a woman in tight pants and a bra, danger and sex colliding on the page and indelibly marking the brain of a high school student dreaming of a more exciting life.
Through these three photographers I found mentors and colleagues who have informed, influenced, and supported my own work. Their photographs are all hanging on my walls, but it is their hearts that I see when I look at them. This is why these are photos I love.
