In the 1970s, my dad traveled to China as one of the first Americans allowed into the country after the fall of Chairman Mao. There, he lived in one of the constituent villages of Red Star Commune and then traveled throughout the country, making pictures of moments encountered along the way. He wrote of his experience in the Michigan Quarterly Review, where I learned about his philosophy as a photographic journalist:
“ ‘Making’ pictures. When I started with pictures I had never heard this expression, ‘making.’ I thought that pictures were to be taken, not made. But because the production of a photograph—from (in some cases) its pre-visualization to the actual print—so directly engages the imagination and technical skill of the artist, it seems to me that making is the much more useful description. Music is made, not played.” - Jack Levine in “Picturing the Chinese: A Photographer’s Statement”
My dad passed away when I was seven and I never had the chance to discuss with him his experiences as a civil-rights lawyer and photographer. Now that I’m older, I rummage through his negatives and written works in an attempt to get to know him even though he’s gone.
The following is a series of prints that I have made in conversation with pictures made by my father. I pursue a dialogue with his eye through magazine clippings, passages from Captain America comics, phonebook pages and abstracted forms. In this series, I incorporate selected photographs of his from China, a Philadelphian jail, and a trip to Nicaragua during the Reagan-era rise of the Sandinista Party, when he spent time in remote villages living with local families and befriending armed soldiers.
