As a film student in the late 70’s and later on in the 80’s, as a professional photographer and filmmaker drafted into the Israeli Military to assist in the production of classified instructional and documentary films I learned that the film making process was inevitably one that required a broad field of cooperation and no less a tremendous stamina and long term belief in a singular project bordering on obsession, or mania in the worst case.  Still Photography I realized offered a more immediate form of gratification: you look, you see, you shoot, you develop, you contact and you print.  At the very least you have recorded a moment for eternity - or until an apocalypse - for your own reward, the pleasure of your friends and family members to whom you dare show that very first 8/10 box you use shamelessly to house your prints, and which I took with me on that hot summer day to meet André Kertész.

 

We sat in a small room by the cafeteria of the Israel Museum.  We sipped bottled water and conversed in French, mostly about Paris, where I had begun taking pictures in '76.  He asked to see the contents of my 8/10-box.  I handed it to him and watching him open it held my breath as he sorted the pictures into three piles.  He explained and I listened.  Photos that weren’t photos.  Photos that made him smile.  The rest.  At the end of our meeting he allowed me to shoot his portrait and then together he walked me through his remarkable exhibit, spanning 68 years of photography.  Riding the sticky bus back to Tel Aviv that day, with my head bobbing against the plate glass window I understood for the first time the meaning of theme, and from that point I understood that exhibiting work never seen for the first time meant examining motive, subject and expression.  In my case this would mean weaving a thread through 5000 black & white frames, wherever possible.  Evidently, my older brother (who despite his own disclaimer of knowledge of anything that occurred to him before the age of 18), noticed me looking at pictures – as opposed to actually reading – and upon my 19 th birthday he handed me a camera and said, “shoot”.  After sifting through my pictures, looking for themes, apparently, the only subject matter I had shot consistently for those 5 years were perplexed kids.  How fitting.
It was the generosity of his spirit as a man, a photographer, and artist that led André Kertész to invite me to the museum to view his retrospective.  It was at that point I could see where I was going, finally.  When we parted ways he told me to return to Paris and I did.  Three months later and 24 years ago.

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SPRING ‘81

Without any post university plans but with 5 years of photography neatly arranged in folders I was approached by a budding Art Historian to “put together” an exhibit; which would open the new “Simtah Gallery” located in the ancient port city of Jaffa.  By 24, photography had become a true passion.  The only tangible result of my encounters and wanderings, it was an interest that - by then - had engaged me more than anything prior to it.  The offer to exhibit was recognition; not for the merit of my photographs, but for the apparent persona of “tall American with the camera around his neck”.  It was an opportunity.  Except for a single group exhibit 4 years earlier at the American College in Paris where I was still a Poli-Sci major, and aside from the pictures I carried around with me to fish compliments from friends and family, no one I didn’t know had ever seen my pictures.  In my 24 year old mind, this was the big time..

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PREPARATION

It must have been a Saturday because of the many supplements that even the beach-bums carried with them as part of the Sabbath ritual in secular Tel Aviv.  A Frisbee caught by a gust of wind sailed out of control threatening to land in the crowd like a Katyusha rocket.  A bewildered gentleman in a Speedo bathing suit, laid sprawling on a voluptuous mermaid printed on his giant beach towel as it tore through the open pages of his newspaper.  Apologies accepted, reaching for the Frisbee I noticed the name of an article he was reading; Andre Kertész ‘All My Life A Photographer’.

 

REGRESSION 1

It was the title of the exhibit more than the name Kertész that struck me like the Frisbee in the newspaper.  With little knowledge of André Kertész even on the poorly printed pages of an Israeli newspaper the photos promoting his exhibit stirred very warm & very fuzzy childhood memories of “The Family of Man” on the coffee table in the living room, and a basement darkroom where my dad, with a cigarette wedged between his fingers showed me how to develop and print a black and white photograph.  Nowadays it would be called quality time.  Then it was simply something we did together.

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REGRESSION TO BOB

My father Norman “Bob” Rosenberg was a scientist’s scientist who researched and developed new technologies for the government the length of his career which ended sadly with his passing in 1988 at the age of 64.  Not the type of dad who spent too much time with his 3 kids beyond supper, a brief recap of our days and the news out of a 9 inch black and white Panasonic on the counter.

 

REGRESSION TO DINNER

Supper was a sprint to the dishwasher.  The meals were always balanced, and between the plentiful meat and potatoes, salad, Apple Juice or Ginger Ale and a desert typically canned fruit cocktail, we chatted, and ate quietly watching Walter Cronkite presenting the war in Viet Nam.  If we were seated to eat by 6:05, it was all over by 6:14, so any time spent with my dad beyond the tasks of maintaining the household was truly a gift.

 

EARLIEST DARKROOM

Once we had the darkroom setup using an old Beseler enlarger under an amber light we made 8 x 10 enlargements in the sink that was normally reserved for Kelly when he returned filthy from his run through the barrels that lined our neighborhood on Thursdays, garbage day.  ‘Kelly’ my parents claimed was short for the Hebrew ‘Kelev’ meaning ‘dog’, and from the day we brought him home from Debby’s Petland in Newton Corner he was our fundamentally mismanaged/abused lovable, dumb as a nail Weimaraner who no doubt because of his weekly rummaging through the corrugated steel barrels surrounding our house a leash law was instituted, and with it an end to an era.  Boys and girls walking home from school would no longer be frozen stiff in their path by the sight of Heidi the Doberman reigning over the corner of Cotton and Stuart, in wait for a car to chase, or Mike the Dalmation who would lift his leg to pee on anything including my back as I sat one day watching a little league game ‘down the (John Ward) school’.

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THE FAMILY OF MAN

“The Family of Man” was not just a book of pictures on the coffee table; it was a place I would go before the torture of a piano lesson or Hebrew school or after being told to “turn off the TV and find something to read”.  Eventually, I ventured beyond the naked ladies and muscular men, and as I grew into my teens I began seeing the portraits, and landscapes as such; feeling their power both as a result and a byproduct.  Composition, and light.  Subject matter and staging.  Spontaneity and emotion.  These were terms and ideas that laid at the rudiment.  I learned about these things more from pictures, than life itself.  A  ‘Chauncey Gardener’ years before Jerzy Kosinski penned ‘Being There’.  Eventually I memorized the book and wondered about the photographers and their interactions with their unbeknownst subjects, as much as the people in the pictures.  In the home my parents created there was a steady flow of ideas and no less, people from varied walks of life and cultures expressing them.  We had newspapers and magazines from science to religion with everything between.  As a child in addition to the hours of mindlessly staring at the “tube” I found quiet refuge in countless pages of anything that came through the mail slot, and through a process of elimination by the age of 24, there was nothing that interested me more than taking pictures.  It was that conclusive.

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BACK TO THE POINT

The best exhibits are unpredictable.  You never know exactly what you are going to see, nor who you’ll bump into, for that matter.  Its like going to a movie with the lights on; no hiding from the impact, or lack of impact so the experience has the potential for being very raw or giving new meaning to the term lack-luster.  While going to an exhibit is like a trip to the mall; mounting an exhibit is actually an enormous task.  Not quite like writing a symphony, or directing a movie but certainly a task that demands basic goal setting, in addition to technical excellence.  With no idea what to show I relied on putting it off to decide for me, while I continued playing Frisbee at my favorite Tel Aviv beach where the sun, the sand and my surging hormones kept me from actually doing anything about it.  It was the search for a thread between all my photos that led me to ‘Through Kiddies Eyes’.  A homage at once to my childhood, and the Limelighters ‘Through Childrens’ Eyes’,  a record my parents might play on the living room ‘hi-fi’ on a weekend afternoon.

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