Reflections
Window light on plaster.
I decided to go through some old photos and take stock of what brought me to this point in my photography. I started with some abstracts, as I am reading a new book about Minor White, a former editor of Aperture magazine who was an early influence on me. His work, blending Zen thought and photography, is profound. I then moved on to a folder labeled “work”, and found many photos I had forgotten about.
These photos were photojournalism, mostly from the end of my career as a reporter for the Star Tribune newspaper. I was pleasantly surprised by the storytelling evident in these images. Most of my career was spent in what we called “hard news.” I investigated governmental malfeasance and misfeasance, and like all reporters I covered crime, disasters and a smattering of feature stories that happened to cross my beats. My favorite work centered on exposing white collar crime, and when I tell tales about my career I tend to focus on those stories. I was not the photographer for these “big stories.” We relied on staff photographers for that, for good reason.
At the close of my career I covered “Outstate” Minnesota, meaning anything outside of the Twin Cities. This involved reporting simple but somewhat interesting stories that were often little more than space fillers for our Minnesota page. This is when I got to contribute my own photos. Our full-time photojournalists were busy covering bigger stories and they didn’t have time or the inclination to travel great distances for minor stories. At the time, I didn’t think much about this work; it was perfunctory. But looking back at the images I realize what an honor it was to be let into the lives of these strangers, some under duress, yet like all of them, full of hope that this reporter/photographer from “the cities” could help them in some way. As I look through the images I wonder what became of the people who let me into their lives. I know some of them have died. Others have moved to new stages in their lives, as I have. Perhaps we will cross paths again one day. If so, I hope I have my camera with me.
Below is a gallery of some of those images. I hope you will forgive me for including some images of my colleagues, who made this work possible, at times thrilling, and always enjoyable in retrospect.
