I need you
Grand Marais, Minnesota
If you haven’t read Waiting for Godot, I suggest you do so. Samuel Beckett’s play features two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who are stuck in a lifeless space waiting for the arrival of someone named Godot, who never arrives. Written shortly after World War II, it’s strangely prescient of our COVID-19 lockdown. We live inside our homes, afraid some invisible pathogen will claim us and our loved ones. Yet we grow weary of our lives in isolation. The routine grates on us. We tire of our own company.
Netflix and YouTube videos only go so far.
I miss holding my girlfriend in a long, silent embrace. I miss dancing with my friends at Cinema Ballroom in St. Paul (the best darned dance studio in the Midwest). I miss my friends from jujutsu and Aikido, though we have not tossed one another around in long time. And I miss the opportunity to make portraits.
I have tried to keep creating. I have shot glassware and self-portraits, still lifes and abstracts, my dog and the cardinals who munch sunflower seeds from a plastic bird feeder that my late wife bought. All of those photographs were good for me; they taught me new skills. More important, they made me dig into my creative wellspring, to look and to see. But let’s be honest: it’s getting old. I need human subjects
I need you.
I recently watched a YouTube video featuring the famous magazine photographer Joe McNally, whose work I admire. He often speaks reverently about John Loengard, his former photo editor at Life magazine. McNally recommended Loengard’s book, As I See It, which encompasses 50 years of his images from the golden age of magazine photography. I ordered a cheap, used hardcover copy, which arrived today. Inside was a handwritten note from the bookseller thanking me for my purchase. She added, “A signed copy, no less!” Sure enough, Loengard had signed the title page. I cracked the book with some additional reverence and made my way through it, savoring each black and white photo.
From the Preface: “As I see it, my photographs, when gathered up, form a mixed bouquet. They have no single subject or topic. If commentary binds them them together, so much the better.”
And from his commentary about a photo of one of those steel coin-operated binoculars that tourists feed at scenic lookouts: “I took a picture of the amusement pier at Old Orchard Beach, intending to show how the hand of man had already altered the Maine coast. The tanker scheme — [a proposal to dock supertankers for offloading in Maine’s deepwater bays] — was soon forgotten and so was what was written. Old news is an oxymoron, but old photograps can hold our attention.”
I considered each photograph in his book and wondered what it was about them that made them live on. Many had historic significance or captured moments of great personalities. Yet others, of ordinary people and places, simply expressed Loegard’s gratitude.
I am ready for Godot to walk through my front door. Yet I know tomorrow will be the same as today, Endless hours waiting for that All-Clear sign. Eventually we will emerge from this crisis and recover our footing. Life will move on, leaving the tens of thousands of corpses in the history books and deep scars in the survivors’ lives. Those of us left standing will be grateful, for awhile, to have survived this plague. But our gratitude will fade as we busy ourselves with work and play and insatiable consumption. Such is the human condition.
For now, I fill my time editing newspaper stories from my dining room. In my spare time, and there is much of it, I am learning to use Capture One photo processing software, studying online lessons on lighting, and how to run a photography business without going broke. I try the photo challenges cooked up by the photographers working for Adorama, a New York photography superstore. How to make in-camera multiple exposures. How to create golden hour in broad daylight. How to make self-portraits with light modifiers you build from ordinary objects like pizza boxes or a white sheet.
But what if Godot never comes? What if this is it, and I fall to COVID-19, the illness caused by a novel coronavirus? Can I leave photographs that will hold your attention?
I wonder.
