Nicholas Nixon's Family Pictures

It isn’t easy to find pictures from Nicholas Nixon’s Family Pictures online. Nixon is well-known for his pictures of AIDS patients, of school children, and for The Brown Sisters, but it seems that his family pictures remain in relative obscurity.

Which is unfortunate. I obtained a copy of this monograph a few months back, and I’m moved by it. These are pictures of his wife, Bebe, and his children Sam and Clementine. The pictures are warm, loving, and funny at times. These are more than portraits; these are scenes from life around the Nixon home when his two children were very young.

Amazingly, Nixon made these photographs with an 8x10 camera. 8x10. I’ve tried making portraits of my son with my 4x5 before, and wasn’t too successful at it. I would expect it to be much more difficult with an 8x10, particularly since these aren’t pictures in which Nixon’s children are posed before the camera. Longer lenses. More bulk. Longer exposures, in all likelihood. And energetic subjects, to say the least. But Nixon knows what he wants. He’s after the beauty of an 8x10 contact print, a sentiment I understand completely.

Somehow Nixon pulls it all off with grace in this charming little publication. Highly recommended for all parents with any interest in photographing their children.

A little introspection

The cover of Friedlander's second volume of self-portraits

I’ve begun a very exciting project that has reinvigorated my creativity, is always accessible, and is just plain fun. Partially inspired by Lee Friedlander’s two volumes of self-portraits, published about 30 years apart, I’ve started photographing myself with a 35mm camera, using a 24mm lens to produce a wide view, typically held at arm’s length. I try to photograph myself in some creative way or another every day. Sometimes I’ll stand in front of signs that seem relevant to my current situation (as at the intersection of Court and Church streets in Salem), sometimes I’ll photograph my shadow and legs on the ground in front of me, and sometimes I’ll simply point the camera at myself during my commute home after work. It has been a lot of fun so far, trying to see myself in new and unusual ways. Yesterday Delaney was asleep in the car’s back seat when we arrived at Troy’s preschool, so I slid into the seat next to her, put my face up next to hers, closed my eyes, pointed the camera at us, and snapped the shutter without waking her. It was cute.

My long-term intent is to do this as a sort of visual diary. By photographing myself every day, I hope to look back in time some day to see how I looked during certain milestones in my life, good and bad. Some day I’ll have a thorough visual record of my changing appearance over time, and by logging my feelings and thoughts each day (which I’m also doing), I hope to have a very introspective record of myself. I’ve described this project to my doctor, and he seemed to think it’s a good idea. And it feels like an artistic one, to boot. I’ve also described it to my favorite living photographer, and he said that it’s a “wonderful idea,” and that perhaps I could contact print several frames of negatives as strips on large boards, complete with the film’s sprocket holes. Sprocket holes included; now why didn’t I think of that?

I’ve burned six rolls of film so far, and I’m averaging about half a roll a day. There’s sure to be some good stuff in there, and I eagerly seek out opportunities to keep shooting each day.

On another note related to introspection, I’ve been reading some “success stories” recently of people who have dealt with depression and succeeded anyway. Yesterday I finished William Styron’s Darkness Visible, and I’m currently reading Lincoln’s Melancholy, How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. I find such success stories fascinating, and even more so when written by the depressives themselves. And I’m proud that I find myself able to keep my former condition at bay and actually use it for good, as a growth experience.

Another Loss

4 Generations

In addition to the break-up of my marriage, I have lost three family members in the past three months. While the first two were quite painful, the most recent one seemed to hit closest to home.

My paternal grandmother, Estella Lopez, died peacefully on July 7th. All 4 of her kids, as well as most of her grandchildren, were in the hospital room with her when she passed. She had been diagnosed with cancer a mere 8 days prior to her death, which also came on her daughter’s birthday.

In the dedication of my personal copy of my graduate thesis, I said that my grandmother “delivered this family from white cotton to white collar.” This woman constantly worked multiple jobs to care for her children when her husband left her. My father and his brothers worked in the south Texas cotton fields as very young boys to help the family out, but my grandmother held them all together. She was always particularly proud of the fact that she never needed help from welfare to support her four children—they made do on their own.

It was a very proud moment 10 years ago when I became the first member of our family to graduate from college—a moment my grandmother was there to share. But a memory just as strong was formed 3 years prior to that. In 1994, at the end of my freshman year, my dad and grandma came to L.A. to bring me home for the summer. We made the drive home the day after my last final, and had some quality time between the three of us. We stopped for the night when we got to Eugene, so that we could call on a cousin of mine for breakfast the next day. We were able to contact him, and my dad took us all out to eat. When I turned 30, my grandma gave me several pages of diary entries she had made in the previous 10 years, and she contemporaneously described that breakfast as being a very special treat. I’m very thankful that we could make that happen for her.

Eerily, she died on 7/7/07, and, as my uncle noted after she passed, “She always loved the slot machines at the casinos.” And as my cousin pointed out, “The only time she could walk fast was when she got to the casino.”

Rest peacefully, Grandma, and we’ll carry your torch.

On Friedlander and Family

And life continues.

I find myself very much interested in the lifelong work of Lee Friedlander these days. His unique, quirky way of looking at the world has produced one of the largest and most varied bodies of work the photography world has ever known. Constantly inventing, he can be relied upon to consistently put out new books of his fresh ways of seeing things from plant stems in vases to “superwide” views of American cities.

I recently bought his book entitled “Family.” With almost 200 pictures, this is a family photo album open for the world to see. It’s a lush visual record of his family’s history—from his honeymoon with his wife Maria, to the growth of his grandchildren. In her Introduction, Maria discusses the familiarity of these pictures from seeing them over the years, but then describes the emotionally moving experience of seeing them all gathered into one cohesive volume. I can imagine.

Maria also discusses some of the trials her marriage to Lee has endured—apparently they considered dissolving the marriage at one point—but they will have been married for 50 years when their anniversary in 2008 comes.

Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Friedlander, and thanks for letting us look.

Letter to Troy and Baby Sister

Kids,

I didn’t want this. I never imagined this could possibly happen. Yesterday I got a list of your mom’s demands from her attorney, because she has decided she wants a divorce. After months of trying to convince her not to break up our family, she has decided she can’t ever be happy with me. I think that there is a lot more going on here than she will acknowledge, but I can’t get through to her, and she’s putting an end to my trying. And her demands are a living nightmare for me: she wants to take you to move in with California Grandma and Grandpa, and only allow you to visit Oregon for a maximum of two weeks a year.

I love you children more than anything in this world. Troy, your excitement every night when I arrive at home is what gets me through the drudgery of another day at work. Your bright, blue eyes, the way you amaze us with your ability to remember things in the smallest detail, and your endless curiosity about this world has made the past three years with you so wonderful. I have all kinds of visual imagery of my time with you running through my head right now. Everybody loves Troy, everybody loves Troy, Troy, Troy, Troy! Troy, Troy, Troy!

And Delaney, I was so excited and convinced that you would grow up to be a Daddy’s Girl. The way you rolled over and beamed at me every morning when I would peek in at you before leaving for work made it so hard to leave each day, but of course I had to. But it also showed me that you were always in a happy mood. You weren’t even really awake, and yet you would just beam at me. You are so cute to watch now as you gain confidence in your walking, show us the periodic Wiggle Worm, and let the whole house know when there’s no more food on your tray. Daddy loves Delaney, Daddy loves Delaney, Daddy loves Delaney, Daddy loves “A-waney!”

I need to fight to keep you kids close to home. I hope things can work out so that you and I will always be close. No matter what problems your mom and I ever had, our family was always the most important thing to me. You are my world. I love you.

Daddy

On Family, I

The next several posts on my blog will be used to examine family pictures made by several photographers. Several well-known photographers have made very personal, sometimes surprising, pictures of their families that I am interested in studying, particularly in my current state of mind.

However, I’ll start with a famous exhibition of photographs in which the term “family” was applied in a very broad, all-encompassing sense: The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition The Family of Man, curated by Edward Steichen in 1955. MoMA put out a call for entries into the show, and the call was answered: over two million pictures were submitted from all over the world. These were whittled down to a final show of 503 photographs from 273 photographers in 68 countries. Several lines from Steichen’s introduction to the book of the show provide a concise description of his intention:

We sought and selected photographs, made in all parts of the world, of the gamut of life from birth to death with emphasis on the daily relationships of man to himself, to his family, to the community and to the world we live in…Photographs of lovers and marriage and child-bearing, of the family unit with its joys, trials and tribulations, its deep-rooted devotions and antagonisms. Photographs of the home in all its warmth and magnificence, its heartaches and exaltations. Photographs of the individual and the family unit in its reactions to the beginnings of life and continuing on through death and burial.

There is a picture in this book which tugged at my heartstrings while looking at it the other night. It’s a picture by Burt Glinn of a small girl on a carousel, taken at the moment her horse went racing past Glinn’s camera. It reminded me of my son’s 3rd birthday this past February, when my dad and I took turns riding on a carousel with him. I took pictures of my son and dad riding it, and although I haven’t printed the negatives yet, you can see my son beaming toward the camera in at least one of them. I could not find Glinn's picture on the Internet, so I thought I’d show two other pictures I find powerful at this time in my life. Dorothea Lange made the picture of the apparent loner in the crowd of men, and Gene Smith made the picture of the little boy and girl. I'm moved by both pictures.

On Arbus, continued

“What I’m trying to describe is that it’s impossible to get out of your skin and into somebody else’s. And that’s what all this is a little bit about. That somebody else’s tragedy is not the same as your own.” –Diane Arbus

The Arbus photograph above, “A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C.,” is just one of Arbus’ famous photographs of “freaks.” My recent study of Arbus began to manifest itself in my photography the other day. I brought my medium format rangefinder to work and worked up the nerve to go photograph the kids at the bus mall across the street. This took a lot of courage on my part: I’ve never approached strangers asking to photograph them, and these kids don’t appear to be very friendly. These are the kinds of kids that will hang out there all day instead of going to school or work. With their tattoos, piercings, dingy clothes, and general “noise,” they all seem to be rebelling against something. Maybe against their parents, or teachers, or perhaps against everything in mainstream society. They all seem like outcasts from their larger peer group. Outcasts like I am in my home.

I felt surprisingly successful in this first attempt at photographing them. While I’ve not developed the film yet, my interaction with those kids was surprisingly warm. Only a couple of them refused to be photographed, and most were readily willing. One kid complimented my efforts. I plan to go back there again and again, and the results should eventually make a telling series on this period in my life. Maybe I’ll become known as the bus mall regular with the camera. That would be fine with me.

Because one can always use more friends.