The year is 1976 and the museum poster on the bare-brick wall of Robby & Farida's kitchen in the epicenter of cool; shows three men huddled closely in the doorway of a decrepit meat cooler, in a Jerusalem market probably.  Robby is no longer with us sadly, and I have no contact with his (first South American) wife Farida with whom he occupied the place (while earning the MA at Harvard that became his ticket to the startup phase of his professional career), so I have no way to confirm.  Not with any relevance to this anecdote; my brother had the coolest ... everything. The coolest clothes. The coolest girlfriends. The coolest apartments... Always the coolest apartments.

 

At the time, I was working at Landy Beef for my Uncle Morris, so the subject of the photo had special meaning for me; also, one of the faces in the photo was similar to the face of a kid I went to High School with.  As an Israeli soldier, a few years later, "travelling" through Southern Lebanon I was reminded of Bob Karem, and wondered if anyone at Newton North High School knew he was Lebanese.

The caption on the poster reads TMUNAHT MATSAV (picture of a situation/position).  Tmunaht Matsav was a photo exhibit I never saw, it hung at the Tel Aviv Museum sometime in the 70s, but for me, the phrase became a phrase defining definition of the impossible.

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In the summer of the Bicentennial this was a poster unlike my Peter Fonda & Dennis Hopper on choppers, or my other favorite of Jean Harlow, cupping her swollen breast.  This was an image that carried with it a seminal idea and which for years to follow I would recite in my head as a mantra of sorts: Tmunaht Matsav... a cross-section of a given time and place; a snapshot if possible that captures every piece of relevant information, the who, what, where, when and why; plus everything that is implied, suggested, unspoken; every truth, half truth, hint, lie, inference and value judgement...

 

On the way to realizing that my photography was not just a casual past-time, but an ever growing compulsion fueled by a wide range of needs; and without downplaying the most obvious "a great way to meet girls", I saw a poster in my brother's 2nd story walk-up in Harvard Sq.; across the street from the aquarium-like Marimekko building on Church St., I believe.  With my eyes closed, I stand today across the street from this mythical pad, and I can practically smell the burnt, smokey aroma of the BLT sandwich rising up from grill at "The Blue Parrot" restaurant, long gone from the world, except in my memory, with my eyes closed on a very hot day in July '07.  None of the neighbors in the adjacent buildings can recall such a place; all that remains is the sky above.  Each time I've been to Harvard Sq. since returning to this part of the world (1 year ago) for good, and better, and without regret, I approach the spot from a different path thinking/hoping perhaps it is my mistake. Perhaps the rickety old triple decker is in fact there; perhaps I just can't see it....

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