Backyard Memories

Black and white photography is neither inferior or superior to color photography. Each has its merits. However, black and white photography allows the photographer to explore form and light in ways that color prevents or obscures.

A particular quality of the black and white photograph is its ability to immediately confer an aura of nostalgia on its subject—to remove it from and lock it in time, principally by the reduction of local color to a range of grays. The absence of full color eliminates the emotional shading that color brings.

More so than its color counterpart, the black and white photograph is an artifact to be read. Its appeal is to the intellect first and the subject is to be discovered through a reading of the tones, lines, textures, shapes and voids in the picture but without the slippery and burdened emotional associations of color.

In our age of increasing attention deficits the color photograph prevails. Color is everywhere—even for the physically or perceptually color-blind. It soothes, titillates, excites and masks. This extension of color into every facet of our media saturated existence blurs the boundaries between what is real and what we perceive as real. However, the black and white image announces it separateness, its artificiality, and thereby makes itself something other, something removed from the way we see the world outside the rectangle—something to contemplate.

The color photograph appeals directly to the emotions—to the mostly unconscious color associations in the viewers mind. It bypasses the intellect. And no matter what the putative subject of the color photograph may be, its color palette will elicit an immediate visceral response. In this way the color photograph can be insidious. Likewise, it is often a reiteration of the obvious—a pretty packaging of the banal and vacuous.

The picture above was taken in the early 1950s. It shows me in the arms of Nick—one of my step-fathers. My memories of him are few. He and my mother were divorced soon after this picture was taken and I did not live with either of them. I lived with my great-grandmother.

I saw Nick only a few times yet this picture confirms the memories I have of him—as someone I liked, and who liked me. He died several years ago. I never saw him after the late 1950s, but I still have this picture, with its off center geometry—with the two of us looking out to the unknown. And with it I can look back at us wondering what was? There we are in that rectangle united, removed from time and worry, composed and recorded for all time in black and white forever.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Lansing mayor Virg Bernero, Reverend Jesse Jackson and Senator Debbie Stabenow at the Reinvest in America rally at the Michigan State Capitol, 1 June 2009.

On the first day of June 2009, General Motors became Government Motors. Compelled to declare bankruptcy the company turned over 60% of its control to the Obama administration and the taxpayers of our nation. On this same day a rally was held at the Michigan Capitol building.

It was predicted that thousands would attend Reinvest in America: Keep the Dream Alive but the threat of rain lessened the numbers. Nonetheless the crowd that massed was sizable.

Supporters of the event included: the Michigan Education Association, the Rainbow Push Coalition, the United Steelworkers, the Michigan Building and Trades Council, and the Lansing NAACP. In attendance were such luminaries as the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Congressman Mike Rogers, Congressman John Conyers, Lansing’s Mayor Virg Bernero, Detroit mayor Dave Bing, and TV’s Judge Greg Mathis.

For those like myself, who were born and raised in Michigan, GM’s failure had been unthinkable. Other companies, even other car companies, could fail but not GM. Yet it happened. The suffering it will cause thousands people and the damage it will inflict upon the economy is immeasurable. The enormity of it all rivals the events of 911, both in scope and meaning. 

I went to the Reinvest in America because I believed it was important to observe this historic day. It would be a day to remember—one of those “Where were you when you heard the news about Martin Luther King, JFK, Bobby, John Lennon and the World Trade Towers?” kind of days. I wanted to make photographs of this day.

I expected throngs of impassioned people, but instead the atmosphere was subdued. It seemed as if many in the crowd were numb from the loss of jobs, pensions, health care, and futures. Or perhaps they were overwhelmed and confused by the ambiguity and complexity of the many issues.

Many of them seemed unsure just what to demand—to protest. Should they shout for single payer healthcare or the return of American manufacturing to American soil? Was the real issue cheap foreign labor? Or was it the North American Free Trade Agreement or the malfeasance of government? What was happening to them and their country? Who and what was to blame? Whom and what should they believe? What should they do?

As I listened to Jesse, Debbie, Mike and John spout their political rhetoric with practiced fire I wondered if I should cry, boo or cheer. Likewise, I wondered about those who by their signs and words expressed a longing for the halcyon days of the fifties and sixties, when jobs were plentiful (if you were young, white and male), gas was cheap and our rivers served as sewers for our most respected corporations—those days when smog was seen as evidence of progress and power rather than a known carcinogen.

I wondered how many of the Chrysler workers calling for “made in America by Americans” will now work for Fiat? I wondered how many of those who decry the import of goods from China, Mexico, and India still do their shopping at WalMart—the world’s largest retailer of Chinese made products and one of the most anti-union corporations in the world? I wondered how many in the crowd perceived the link between the mobility provided by the automobile, the resultant rise of the suburbs and today’s foreclosure debacle?

I wondered about a lot of things on the first of June 2009 and I’m still wondering.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Mixed Signals © Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Brian’s father collected antique automobiles, many of which he restored in the combined workshop and garage behind his home. In those years, from Eisenhower through Ford, the Mill’s home received the same meticulous and loving care that Mr. Mills lavished on his cars.

On a recent visit to Owosso, Michigan, my hometown, I took a walk through the neighborhood where I lived as a boy. This took me past the old Mill’s home. Over the years I have lost track of Brian and know nothing of his parents fate. It was shocking to find that their once beautiful home now stood empty and apparently abandoned—its paint peeling, its foundations cracked and the yard choked with weeds and trash—most of the upper story windows broken out.

As I stood there looking and remembering, I noticed the old TV antenna on the roof. Once it pulled from the sky the signals of Walt Disney Presents, I Love Lucy, Art Linkletter, Father Knows Best, Perry Mason and Tales of the Texas Rangers. Now it lay on its side unused and forgotten. I thought this was a subject worthy of a couple of shots—nostalgia for the files. I pulled my camera from its bag and began framing photographs through the viewfinder.

After taking three or four shots, I noticed the contrail of a jet entering my field of vision. Again I raised the camera and peered into the viewfinder. The straight line being drawn across the sky, just above and behind the antenna, offered a counterpoint to the bare branches of the tree reaching down to the dead metal arms of the antenna beneath. The angles and deep shadows formed by the walls and roofline of the house completed the composition.

Years of practice had prepared me to quickly assess the formal elements of a photograph—lines, shapes, shadows and space––and compose. I did and I got the shot. Immediately I sensed there was more in this composition, something I could not yet articulate—an essence—a subject I would have to define upon reflection.

Later, as I inspected the photo on my computer screen, I searched for that essential subject. It proved elusive. Why had I made this picture and what was it really about? The more I looked at it the more subjects I discovered—subjects, not objects.

Once more I was reminded of what I long have known, that the subject of any photograph is dependent upon who is looking at it—it resides in the photographer’s choices and the viewer’s interpretation and not in the object(s) pictured. 

This particular photograph may be interpreted as a formal composition or as a statement about the passage of time, change and renewal. Likewise, it can be seen as a commentary on the loss of the American Dream. Depending upon the viewer it is all of these, none, part of each, or something else.

It is instructive to trace the decision making process that resulted in this image.

1.     I went to Owosso intending to photograph places of meaning to me and to discover what was left of my old neighborhood after nearly 50 years.

2.     When I came to the old Mill’s house, I was surprised by its poor condition. When I saw the antenna on the roof I first thought of its potential as a file photo. Then I saw it in the context of a formal composition, as a shape, line, tone and form. I also wanted to make a picture that said something about the deterioration of the place.

3.     When I saw the jet’s contrail I realized I could incorporate it into the composition I had been making. So I waited until it moved into the frame. At this point I was thinking of the contrail’s quality as a line and not about its meanings.

4.     Later upon viewing the results I realized I had captured several suggestive elements in the final composition. The contrail emanating from the jet passing through the sky—this metal tube filled with living beings—going from one place to another in time, contrasts with the broken antenna, a relic of past times, values and technology. The living and budding branches of the tree suggest the cyclical nature of life, growing up from soil enriched by decay.

The subject of any photograph begins when the photographer decides where, when and at what to point the camera, however the photographer cannot read his or her own unconscious—cannot fully know what he or she has really seen and apprehended or why. Likewise, the viewer of the photograph will see it through their eye, intellect and unconscious mind. So one might liken the photograph to a child, that results from the choices and acts of its parents, but which goes on to build its own life and meaning—becoming the many subjects it can be.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009  

Brownie Bullet and Nikkormat FTN © Michael Maurer Smith 2009

And in the beginning there was, for me at least, the Kodak Brownie Bullet. As simple as could be, it took black and white roll film and allowed no adjustment for aperture, shutter speed or focus. It was truly a point-and-shoot. For a kid in the 1950s, it was perfect. 

Later as a Marine, stationed in Okinawa in 1972, I bought my first “real” camera. The Nikkormat FTN. This baby was built like a rock (heavy as one too), and a close examination of the photograph will show a significant dent on the prism housing just above the letter “t” in the Nikkormat name. That came from the camera being dropped on a cement sidewalk. There was no effect on the camera’s functions. In fact it is still fully functional after 37 years! Morever, its 50mm f1.4 lens is, in my opinion, the sharpest Nikon lens I have ever owned.

I can only hope my current Nikon Digital SLRs will last half as long as this gem.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Shaw's (now gone) on old M-78, near East Lansing, MI © Michael Maurer Smith 1991

As the sun rose I found much to photograph, anything that stood up so the light would strike it—an almost audible clamor—at sunrise—houses, barns, fences and telephone poles, clusters of trees and dwellings, and like a sail at sea the occasional gleam of a grain elevator. I saw it but did not fully sense that these constructions were pathetically temporary on the vast exposed landscape. In this I found their appeal, their life enhancing poignancy.

Wright Morris (God Country and My People)

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009