Rites of Spring

No rants today, I promise.



Spring is in the air here in the nation's capital, and ranting would just spoil the karma. The cherry blossoms are about to bloom, the Nationals are about to christen a new stadium, and the White House lawn was filled yesterday with thousands of children, most of them giddy at the prospect of having their pictures taken with Mickey Mouse or Strawberry Shortcake or Snoopy.

(Any character, that is, except Teddy Roosevelt, the goofy nine-foot Washington Nationals mascot my daughter is absolutely terrified of. "What is he doing here?!?" asked Alexandra, as we entered the White House grounds. I honestly believe that I can lay claim to the only four-year-old in America who has nightmares about a dead president.)

The White House Easter Egg Roll aside, we're fortunate to have a more subtle, more personal harbinger of spring each year, and we don't have to even leave our house to see it. As if keeping to a train schedule, every March a bird takes up residence in the nest a foot or two off our kitchen window. Sometimes a robin, usually a mourning dove, I watch each day with fascination as the mother patiently sits on her eggs, oblivious to everything around her.

I'm not bird expert, and so I always wonder how these birds find this same nest. Word of mouth? Is there some bird equivalent of Yelp! or Craigslist, where a cardinal can find a nice duplex in North Arlington for not that much? (In fact, go ahead and compare the two images, from this year and last, and I'd swear it was the same bird returning.)

Last year, as some of you might remember, the chick's arrival came on a sad day indeed for those of us here in Virginia, just minutes after a moment of silence for the 32 students gunned down at Virginia Tech. I didn't want to read too much into it at the time, but the touching coincidence stayed with me for a while. This year, we wait again, just as eager to see a couple of scrawny necks peeking out of their nest. In a world filled with so much sadness and war, it's always amazing to me how much joy I can get out of some baby birds being born outside the kitchen window.

And while we're on the topic of birth, I did want to share a beautiful maternity image I shot in the Old Town studio a few weeks ago. I photographed Alicia and her family a few years back and was delighted when they told me they were expecting again. Sometimes women are unsure of what to bring to these portrait sessions and my standard response is something along the lines of, "don't think too hard about it." Well, Alicia brought along some wrappy thing (a very technical fashion term) and within an instant transformed herself into a perfect incarnation of a Greek goddess. That was a neat trick. (As usual, double-click the images for better viewing.)


I'll close this short post today with a couple of photos from yesterday's White House event. The first picture is of our friend Denyce with her daughter, Ella. The last time Alexandra and Ella saw each other they were munching on chocolate crepes under the Eiffel Tower. Now both girls are a few years older and it was fun to hear Ella's talking voice, which is rich and distinctive--just like mom's. I have this dream of shooting Denyce and Ella in costume someday at the Kennedy Center, Big Carmen and Mini Carmen.

The second picture is Alexandra, of course, who might have a thing against Teddy Roosevelt but never met a fairy she didn't like. No, Alexandra is all about fairies and we were happy to see such a convincing one on the South Lawn.

Hope you all had a happy Easter and I wish you all a happy spring. Wedding season begins this week, so we'll be back with some fun pictures in no time.


Matt

In a handbasket

As I get ready to fly to Las Vegas on Thursday, where I will be staying in that "other" Paris, the one that, sadly, many Americans will happily substitute for the real European city-- the one we visited just last month-- I couldn't help but think about the ever-blurring line between reality and manufactured reality.

There's nothing like staying at Paris Las Vegas, where the facade looks like it's made of foam core and the shops all sell French bric-a-brac, which usually means rooster serving dishes and rooster coasters and rooster pitchers. What is it with the roosters? It's like someone told the Las Vegas folks that French country style is all about roosters and they haven't looked back since. But if it makes people feel more French and if it makes them gamble a bit more, who's really to mind? After all, Las Vegas has always been about fake reality, from the New York skyline to the Venetian canals. Even the lighting in all the shopping areas makes it feel like perpetual dusk.

I'm going to Las Vegas to judge the photojournalism category at the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International conference. And as you can imagine, there are a few wedding photojournalists--just a few--for whom the line between reality and staged is already fairly thin. Those walking-down-the-country-road-and-dipping-the-bride pictures might fool them but they don't fool me. I've shot 450 consecutive weddings and have never seen that happen for real. So maybe Paris Las Vegas, with all those roosters, is the perfect venue. And then again, maybe I'm a good person to ask to judge.

I had already been in this frame of mind, of distinguishing real from fake, after my brother's brilliant op-ed piece in this past Sunday's New York Times. In that column, Daniel discussed the rash of fabricated memoirs that have plagued the publishing world of late, beginning with James Frey "A Million Little Pieces" a few years back, and ending with last week's revelation that the highly touted autobiography of Margaret Jones (in actuality, Margaret Seltzer), "Love and Consequences," is a complete and utter fraud. (She said she was a half-white, half-Native American member of a South Central gang. Turns out she was an all-white valley girl, which, I guess, is close enough for government work, as I like to say.)

As Daniel pointed out, the crimes of these fabulists is not that they've plagiarized work, but rather plagiarized experience. The sadness, the suffering, the horrors of these respective memoirs belong not to them but to other people. Even the genre of Holocaust memoirs has been sullied--a field my brother and I know something about--with the revelation that a bestselling 1997 memoir by a Polish Jew was all made up, right down to the sympathetic wolves.

(In hindsight, one would think that would have been a giveaway. Kindly wolves? It sounds like an after school special. There's a an old Woody Allen stand-up routine I used to listen to when I was a teenager, the one where he's "discovered" at a Klan rally. As Woody tells it, he's at this rally and they ask for donations and when it comes his turn he says, "I pledge fifty dollars." About to be killed, he relates how his whole life flashes before his eyes--growing up in the South, buying gingham for Emmmy Lou--until he realizes that it's the wrong life that's flashing.)

Believe it or not, though it will all seem apropos in a moment, none of this was on my brain this afternoon, when, as I was driving my car on the George Washington Parkway, I realized this country was going to hell in a handbasket faster than a speeding bullet. And it all has to do with more fake reality. Yup, it was right near the Key Bridge, as I listened to a WTOP radio report about a new vest that is being marketed to "hardcore gamers," those people who spend their entire lives waving their arms at their fifty inch LCD televisions, that I knew it was time to hoist the Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter banner.

Why, you ask? What could be so wrong with a vest for video gamers? Well, you see, this particular vest, made by a company called TN Games (I was driving and trying to scribble notes, the horror of which even a video game can't replicate), uses puffs of compressed air into various pockets to simulate the effects of....ready?....being shot or stabbed or even Bazooka'd. So when the cartoon Nazi pulls his trigger, you feel it in the chest.

Well, if that isn't exactly what the youth of this country need right now: a more enhanced, more real simulation of what it feels like to be gunned down. It's not enough that this particular report of WTOP was done during a jovial exchange between reporter and anchor, as each gushed about the coolness of such an accessory. As my mind raced around the recent reports, on the very same radio station, of the deaths of two accomplished young women, both shot, on the campuses of Auburn University and Chapel Hill, I kept waiting for the kicker. Surely, one of these journalists would bring up the issue of the sanity of such a gaming device. Surely one of them would mention Virginia Tech or Northern Illinois or the mall in Omaha. Surely.

Nope, no such luck. Just a fun exchange about the latest gotta-have-it gadget from the gaming industry. As the anchors and reporter finished their banter, one of them did raise the issue of whether a vest like this could lead to "desensitizing" people to the effects of gun violence. The reporter assured said anchor that he had been told by the manufacturer that the vest could actually be a good tool towards "sensitizing" people to violence.

Well, there's logic for you. It's not just a vest which heightens a video gamer's sense of violence, it's a teaching tool. Heck, why not bring it around to elementary schools, so all youngsters in America can have an early simulation of what it feels like to be murdered in the cafeteria.

Look, I know I'm supposed to write fluffy pieces about weddings but tonight's not one of them. We are a culture that is losing it's grip. Our children already spend so much time playing their Xbox 360's and their PlayStation's that stories abound of overweight kids who go to a real tennis court and find they can't hit a ball like their televisions promised they could. (Just last week The Onion featured a headline that read, "Federer shows up to Grand Slam event with Wii controller.")

Add to this the fact that so many of these video games are not about tennis and golf and baseball, but rather murder and car theft and war. Does anyone really believe that the images these kids are seeing--game after game after game--are not leaving an indelible mark? Well, if not, they now have the simulated indelible mark, thanks to the folks at TN Games.

Pathetic. Truly pathetic.


*******


I want to switch gears completely here and give a little holler to my friends Stephanie and Stewart Brown. I shot their wedding some nine or so years ago--I can't even remember anymore--in an adorable little church in Maryland. It was one of the earlier weddings I photographed, come to think of it, but I still remember, all these years later, cursing the microphone that was coming out of Stephanie's head.

We've stayed friends through all these years, and they have two great boys. In fact, Stewart and Stephanie know another couple whose wedding I photographed, Diane Halpin and Kevin Cordell, and we all went to dinner at Blacksalt a few years back. (Diane Halpin is the world's greatest pediatrician, by the way, so we see each other every time Alexandra has a cough.)

Stewart had a little medical issue come up last week and he was incredibly brave and
tough through a very, very long surgery. So was Stephanie. And I'm sure the boys as well! So I just wanted to say, hang in there, Stewart, beer is on the way. Well, maybe not this week but soon enough. Get well soon.


******


And one last tidbit:

The other morning, the Washington Post ran a big story about the state of our national Mall. In a word, it's a disgrace, and I applaud the Post's Marc Fisher for taking the time to write about it. What began as a celebration of our nation through parks and monuments, cherry trees and statues, has turned into an endless sea of jersey barricades, chain link fencing and permanently parked construction and police vehicles. Security bollards are placed without thought, public areas are cordoned off, and snow fencing has replaced manicured walkways. (The scenes below were all taken within twenty feet of the actual White House border. The White House!)

September 11 was in 2001. It is now 2008 and someone needs to take charge. I'm not in favor of more government, but we need an aesthetics czar and fast. For years I've shaken my head as construction equipment is left encircled by chain link fence on the Ellipse. For years, I've sighed heavily as I've watched tourists have to photograph the White House as they're surrounded by chain link. And ever since 9/11 I've desperately hoped for some consistency with regard to the placement of those stubby things called "bollards." (In front of the Federal Reserve they are the wrong color and placed so close to the original steps that they create a visual claustrophobia. In front of the Senate offices they don't match the right architectural style.)

I know it's not fashionable to speak highly of the French, but that's just nonsense. We should look to Paris for guidance here. The notion that the French would allow their beautiful city to be so cluttered with Jersey barricades is laughable. Take a stroll through les Jardins du Luxembourg and see how much chain link you see. This past winter, there was story about a new tradition started by the National Park Service, the lighting of tremendous "yule" logs in a pit on the Ellipse. It seemed like a fun idea--people gathering around a huge fire pit before the holidays, singing carols and sipping hot chocolate. Then I saw the photo that accompanied the story: the pit was surrounded by chain link fence. Currier and Ives just rolled over in their graves.

According to the Post story, Chip Akridge, a big developer and avid runner, wants to do something about the uglification of this once beautiful part of our nation's capital. He's created the Trust for National Mall and hopefully some of these issues can finally get the hearing they deserve.

Paris, and no Hilton

I know we're all supposed to love Paris in the springtime, but trust me, January ain't all that bad.

We made our second January excursion to the City of Light in the last three years, and I can see making it an annual pilgrimage. After all, what's not to like? The city is just as beautiful, the lines at the Louvre are are a breeze, and there's nothing better, quite frankly, then sitting outside a bistro in St-Germain-des-Pres on a cold winter night watching people walk by. (I can't for the life of me figure out why Americans can't figure this part out. The space heaters make it nice and toasty and the view can't be beat.)

And this trip held the added bonus of staying not in some random hotel, but rather the apartment of a friend. It makes all the difference in the world. Hotels force you to go out to eat each meal, to have your clothes pressed at absurd rates (and if you want to know what absurd means, check out the dollar against the euro), and to go out on some concierge-approved plan each day. They make one think like a tourist.

An apartment, on the other hand, forces one to live; to buy groceries each morning at the Monoprix or the cheese shop, to figure out those damn European washing machines (is it the sun symbol or the umbrella symbol or the half moon symbol??), and to wander smaller side streets. I guess the goal of any traveler is to blend in, and on this trip we came closer than ever.

(Not to mention that our address, 3 rue Jacob, came with a history. We learned that Madame de Lamballe, Marie Antionette's best friend lived here. And, without getting too grisly, it was from this location that she was famously taken by the revolutionary mob, beaten and dismembered, before having her head paraded on a pole for her friend to see. Well, I guess that was grisly.)

This was Alexandra's third trip to Paris in her four years, and I can't tell you how adorable she was saying "bonjour" and "merci" to everyone she met. It took her all of three minutes at the Jardins du Luxembourg to latch onto a French school field trip. Only one of these kids, who had traveled three hours from central France, spoke a word of English but that didn't seem to matter at all. By the end of an hour they were all ready to adopt Alexandra and bring her home with them.

Between the pony rides at Les Tuileries, the hot chocolate at Angelina (again!), and the seemingly endless cavalcade of carousels (no city could possibly have more), Alexandra was having a blast. We were too, though the aforementioned Euro exchange rate is enough to give anyone the blues.

The reason, by the way, we were in France was to help my brother celebrate the great success of the French translation of his book, Les Disparus. Winning the Prix Medicis is huge, obviously, and we got to see for ourselves: when we entered a cafe one evening Daniel was immediately surrounded by book-wielding fans looking for an autograph.

(I should also mention that it was my father's first trip to France (or Europe) at the tender age of 79. I think he liked it, though he kept saying that Starbucks had bigger and better coffee. How do you say oy vey in French?)

Anyway, here are some pictures:













































































































































Take care,

Matt


p.s. A quick shout-out to our good friend Katharine Weymouth, who was named publisher of the Washington Post today. (I'm not even sure if one can still qualify for a shout-out if said person is now a publisher of a legendary newspaper.) We've known Katharine since our dogs, Cooper and Max, were best buds as puppies. Yikes, that was ten years ago. Anyway, we couldn't be more excited for you, Kath!

I photographed Katharine two weeks ago in the Old Town studio and think she looks fantastic here.

Hash House Harriers

A little bird has been whispering in my ear that my posts of late have been a tad on the ponderous side. “Get back to weddings,” this bird keeps chirping.

Well, okay. I try and keep a good balance on The Dark Slide, alternating between a bit of weddings and a bit of history, and as the pendulum swings once again, we now return to our regularly scheduled program. (But first, do check out my latest column at www.sportsshooter.com regarding the bombshell announcement last week that Robert Capa’s long lost negatives of the Spanish Civil War—known as the “Mexican Suitcase” in photo circles—has finally been found. Whew, got that in!)

And just to prove that we can go two in a row without drifting into weighty territory, I promise that this post will be followed shortly with some fun pics from our recent trip to Paris. We love Paris in the wintertime; the crowds have thinned, the weather is mild, and moules frites abound. Plus, I know you guys always like to see what new cultural landmark Alexandra will be jumping in front of.

So, on with the weddings!

It seems to me that I should begin any post about a couple that had a three-mile fun run for all of their wedding guests on a cold winter morning with, well, the run itself. Because that run seemed to represent everything that is important to Doug Sackin and Jessica Adelman: family and fun.

I got to the Willard Hotel on the morning of Jessica and Doug's wedding to find just about every guest--guests I would later see in suits and ties--laughing in the lobby, dressed in sweats and hoods and gloves. Jessica, bride-to-be-was decked out in running attire, complete with a veil. As I was warned before the wedding, Doug is a hashing enthusiast, and he and Jessica have become followers of the world's most eccentric running club, the Hash House Harriers. (Say that three times fast.)

What's hashing, you ask? Well, without getting technical to the point that someone will write in an correct me, hashing is basically a way of turning competitive running into a much more inclusive, fun, and adventurous pursuit. I Googled and here's the best all-around definition I could find:

"Hashing is a state of mind- a friendship of kindred spirits joined together for the sole purpose of reliving their childhood or fraternity days, releasing the tensions of everyday life, and generally, acting a fool amongst others who will not judge you or measure you by anything more than your sense of humor."

Everyone is welcome on the fun runs, old and young, in shape and out. (In fact, some of the participants were not even walking yet!) The point seemed clear to me: have fun, laugh with friends, get some exercise. Hashers (and I'm not sure if I'm using these terms correctly) follow a trail that has been left earlier in the day, along with some clues designed to throw the scent off, so to speak. Once again, from the Hash House Harriers home page:

"The Hash House Harriers is a more social version of Hare and Hounds, where you join the pack of hounds (runners) to chase down the trail set by the hare or hares (other runners), then gather together for a bit of social activity known as the On In or Down Down with refreshment, humor, song and sometimes a feast."

Who could argue with that? And what better way to spend a chilly Washington winter morning? As the entire wedding party gathered in the middle of Pennsylvania Ave. for a group photo, I thought to myself, this is a fun way to begin a special day.

I returned later in the day for Doug and Jessica's actual wedding. Sweatshirts and scarves were replaced by tuxes and gowns, but the sense of fun was still there. As I walked into the room where Jessica was getting ready I found her mom taking a nap on the sofa, her dog snuggled beside her. Jessica and Doug's pooch was ambling around the room as well. My kind of wedding.

The ballroom at the Willard looked spectacular, with the chuppah in the center delicately balancing scores of votives. And because the ceremony configuration was in the round, all guests had a good vantage point for the proceedings.

People always assume that January is a "slow" month for wedding photographers, but I have to say some of the most fun I've had at weddings has been in the winter. There's a cozy feeling that hangs over a winter wedding, something that's a bit hard to explain. And needless to say, things heat up a bit as the first strains of the hora are played.

And in this case, Jessica and Doug had some extra help. Jessica's sister, Jocelyn, plays violin with the Richmond Symphony and she and her pals joined in to lend the band a hand. Even later, she dazzled the guests with a beautiful rendition of a piece called "Invocation." (Jocelyn probably didn't expect a wedding photographer who would talk her ear off about the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, the greatest orchestral work of the twentieth century. But how could I resist, knowing that her thesis revolved around the question of Shostakovich's subversive/compliant relationship with Stalin? I alluded to this longstanding debate way back here.)

I probably should wrap this up: It's 11:00p.m., the Giants have just won the Super Bowl (my dad is very excited right now), and I have to teach at Boston University's new Center for Digital Imaging campus in Georgetown in the morning. I'll be back in a day or so with some of those Paris pictures I promised earlier.

See ya,


Matt



p.s. As always, double-click images for better viewing.

Bird Bites Dog

Just five days ago I wrote a column about the odd things photographers collect, and how one of my most treasured possessions is a signed print of Nick Ut's 1971 Pulitzer Prize winning photograph--without a doubt one of the most recognizable photographs ever taken.

I worked with Nick when I was in Los Angeles in the early nineties and, like most photographers of my generation, had idolized him for years before ever meeting him. Nick called me yesterday from Los Angeles and said that he hopes we can get together when he comes out to Washington for a ceremony in which some of his cameras will be given to the Newseum. I can't wait.

I've always tried to make The Dark Slide less of a wedding blog ("and Jennie wore a gorgeous Vera Wang dress...") and more of a ongoing exercise in connect-the-dots. I try to make connections--from the wedding world to photojournalism and from the current back to my past--that lead somewhere. Learning today of the deaths of two great photographers, I was again reminded that life truly does follow such a path of connectivity.

My signed copy of Nick Ut's photo is something I cherish. Needless to say, it's a photo every young news photographer knows well, an image I can remember looking at over and over again during lunchtime at Mattlin Junior High School on Long Island. But I have lots of other photos that mean a great deal me, photographs that may lack the recognition of Nick's image but are equally as important. One such photo, taken in 1961--one year before I was born--has to be one of the oddest, a bizarre encounter between one truly peeved bird and one dopey golden retriever.

It's signed by the photographer, right down there in the right hand corner: George Honeycutt, 1961. It's a remarkable picture--a weather feature, I'm guessing. Remarkable, of course, because, well, you just don't see a lot of birds taking on dogs ten times their size. When I started my career in Binghamton, New York we used to call these photos "enterprise." As in, "Matt, we need some enterprise art for 1A." For the non-newsies here, that usually gets translated as "Matt, we don't have a clue what to put on page one tomorrow. Can you go drive to a park and find us a sunny day photo?"

I did that a lot but I never got a picture this good.

George Honeycutt died on Tuesday of a stroke. His son, Kevin, who runs a company which produces massive charity events and who gave me this picture some eight years ago, wrote to tell me, as well as point me to an appreciation piece in the Houston Chronicle, where his dad served served as director of photography for thirty-three years. Thirty-three years. Wow.

Kevin has always been very proud of his father. I knew it way back when he gave me the bird photo. We were sitting in a diner near the town of North Pole, Alaska (which is nowhere near the north pole but makes a lot of money selling postcards to tourists who couldn't care anyway), eating some of the best pie you'll ever have, when Kevin started telling me about his dad. We had time to kill, as the thousands of cyclists who were taking part in the Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride still had fifty miles to ride that day. Kevin told me about this photo his father had taken, the one of the bird and dog, and promised to send me a signed copy as soon as we got back to civilization. He kept his word.

But today, when I clicked on the link Kevin sent me, I learned a lot about George Honeycutt that I didn't know: How he saved a fellow photographer from drowning with only a camera strap, how he won accolades for a 1966 piece on poverty in Texas, and that he loved to fish. I love hearing stories about photographers, especially those of the generation before me, and I'm glad I had a chance to learn more about the man behind this photo that has always made me smile.

*******


Another great photographer passed away this week, one whom I did have the pleasure of knowing, if just for a few years. If Nick Ut's photo blindsided a nation with the horror of the war it was waging in Southeast Asia, Bernie Boston's iconic 1967 image of an anit-war protest single-handedly captured the growing tide of discontent with that war. Like Ut's picture, Boston's picture is timeless: a young man in a turtleneck sweater placing flowers in the barrels of soldier's guns. It's a photograph that became spokesmodel for an entire generation, much like the image of a lone protester waving off a tank in Tienanmen Square would some twenty-two years later.

I had the pleasure of working alongside Bernie Boston when I came to the nation's capital in 1988. To say that he was a true gentleman would be an understatement. Politeness oozed out of the man. He treated younger photographers with incredible kindness and generosity. And other than veteran Washington photographer Doug Mills, whose bald head has been recognized below more congressional hearing tables than perhaps anyone else, Bernie Boston was not a difficult guy to spot in a scrum. His ever-present cowboy hat was a hallmark of the Washington news media.

In fact, Bernie's cowboy hat is one of the reasons I'm writing this photography blog today. Back in 1984, when I was still a clueless English major in Binghamton, New York, reading "Absalom, Absalom" and "Look Homeward, Angel," Ronald Reagan made a campaign swing through the Triple Cities. By this point in my life I was spending far too much time working for the college newspaper and far too little time reading Faulkner. I covered Reagan's stop at Union-Endicott High School and was mesmerized by the presence of the traveling White House press corps.

"There they are!" I thought, as I watched the photographers whose photo credits were legendary to any budding photojournalist: Dirck Halstead, Bernie Boston (yup, he's the one in the cowboy hat), Barry Thumma, Wally McNamee. Ronald Reagan was on the stage but somehow I was shooting pictures of the press corps! (It wouldn't be the first or last time in my life that I'd miss the main picture.)

When I read this afternoon that Bernie had passed away I knew exactly where to find that old contact sheet from Endicott, New York. It's one of those relics that I stumble upon from time to time, one that always reminds me how I got from point A to B.



Matt

p.s. As always, double click photos for larger viewing. And if you can identify anyone else in the press corps photo, extra credit! Top picture by George Honeycutt, Vietnam protest by Bernie Boston.

It's about time!

Fun news to report tonight: a childhood friend of mine, Marco Beltrami, a composer who has become the go-to guy in Hollywood for horror and action films, received his first Academy Award nomination today for his score to 3:10 to Yuma. Many critics say it's long overdue.

I'm quite confident that Marco wouldn't recognize (or even remember) me at this point in his life. But back in the late sixties and early seventies we saw each other several times a year. Marco's dad, Nino, is a mathematician and one of my father's oldest friends. We used to visit the Beltrami boys out near Stony Brook, Long Island, where we would have races down the enormous wooded hill in the backyard of their home. One weird memory: I remember coming down with chicken pox at the Beltrami home one year.

Anyway, Marco vaulted to stardom after he wrote the score for a small film in 1996 called Scream. It made a few dollars, if I remember correctly.

Congratulations, Marco!

*******

Also from the Dep't. of Overdue Praise: My dear friend Kelly Corrigan, whose wedding I photographed many years back in Radnor, Pennsylvania, is now officially a best-selling author, having popped up on this week's New York Times bestseller list with her newly released memoir, The Middle Place.

I first wrote about Kelly back in October of 2006, after she had started her cancer website and had written a children's book about cancer called "Last Year, This Year." You can find that post here.

Since then, Kelly has been hard at work on The Middle Place, a memoir that touchingly (and, not surprisingly, knowing Kelly, humorously) deals with both her own breast cancer as well as the bladder cancer that her father, Big George, was struggling with. One doesn't ever expect to share chemo treatments with a parent but Kel did just that.

Last week I had the honor of hearing Kelly read from The Middle Place at Thyme Out in Gaithersburg. Thyme Out is a place where folks can prepare delicious meals for their families (thereby avoiding expensive take-out) and happens to be owned by Kelly's dear friend, chef Missy Bigelow Carr. Yup, I shot Missy's wedding as well!

It was fantastic to see Missy's business doing so well and Kelly's book gathering incredible word of mouth. (Kelly did a segment with Ann Curry on the Today show last week.) To get a feel the effect this book is having on regular people, read this story.

So skip on over to Amazon.com and pick yourself up a copy of The Middle Place. We're proud of you, Kel!


Matt

Double Exposure: What happens after the shutter is released?

Photographers are a curious lot when it comes to the things we collect. Every shooter I've ever known has a closet filled with boxes upon boxes of odd mementos, faded press passes sporting more youthful (and thinner) headshots, and favorite photos made by our friends and idols.

I'm no different. Though I have copies of my own photos signed by the likes of Oprah and Jimmy Carter, I'd be more likely to share with you some of my more offbeat collectibles, like the official candy bar of the Million Man March (it always seemed a bit off-message to me), a cigar I picked up near the bombed out Commandancia in Panama that reads "Antonio Noriega" around the band, or the signed copy of Catch-22 I secured when I photographed Joseph Heller at the USA Today building in Arlington. (Oh, wait. I gave that to my childhood friend, David Fischer. You so owe me, David.)

One of my all-time favorites comes courtesy of the international airport in Riyad, Saudi Arabia. It's a bright orange puffy envelope used by the airline for items that can't be brought aboard an aircraft. The items, presumably collected from passengers before a flight, would be given back to said flyers upon landing. A pen knife, you're thinking, or a pair of scissors, right? No. Printed right there on the envelope, in big, bold letters is the following warning: "If item removed from passenger is valuable, like a gold dagger,..."

Like a gold dagger! I'd love to see the folks at TSA deal with that one.

I do have a couple of things that aren't frivolous, of course. One of them is a print of one of the most famous photographs ever taken, signed by the photographer. In fact, it's so famous an image that I really didn't need a photo here. All I really need to say is "girl runs down street screaming after napalm attack" and you'll instantly conjure the image. There aren't too many photographs that have that much visual recognition.

The photograph was taken by Nick Ut, one of the true living legends of photojournalism. I consider myself incredibly luck to have worked next to Nicky for the couple of years I was in Los Angeles during the early nineties. I was shooting for UPI and Nick was with AP, of course, the same outfit he made the napalm photo for. We were competitors, technically speaking, but Nick doesn't see anyone as a competitor once the scrum is over. He is a teddy bear of a guy, someone so polite, so caring, so lovable that you sometimes have to remind yourself that he took one of the most haunting photographs of the twentieth century.

In fact, I simply need to point to the inscription, which I'm somewhat embarrassed to report reads, "To my best friend, Matt...Nick Ut" to illustrate my point. As much as I would love to think otherwise, the truth is I'm not Nick's best friend. Not even close. But that's just it. Nick sees everyone as his best friend and vice versa.

I shared a lot of laughs with Nicky in Los Angeles. He was never one to turn down a free meal, especially the big Rose Bowl media dinner held at an L.A. steakhouse. I think they called the event the Beef Bowl or something. And I'll never forget a press event to introduce a new perfume line from Elvira, the late-night TV vamp. We photographers love our swag and I can still picture Nick stuffing twenty bottles of free Elvira perfume into his Domke bag.

"Nicky, what the hell are you going to do with all of that stuff?" I asked.

"I give to wife!" he said with a huge smile.

I haven't seen Nick in a while (the last time, I think, was chasing Monica Lewinsky around Washington. Nick is such a veteran of the Los Angeles courtroom beat that his editors sent him here to see if he could work some magic on the east coast). But two recent back to back stories about him caught my eye and reminded me what a great human being he is. They also reminded me of the great compassion that photographers often have for their subjects.

The first appeared a couple weeks back in the Washington Post, by Phillip Kennicott, headlined, "Poles and Decades Apart, Two Silent Screams Issue Discomfiting Reverberations." The story analyzes the odd bookends that now seem to define Nick's career: that iconic image of a young Kim Phuc running down that road in Cambodia in 1972, coupled with another great photo taken by Nick Ut thirty-five years to the day later, a teary Paris Hilton being hauled off to L.A. County jail. To the day, ladies and gents. Is there some cosmic irony at work here or are the parallels purely poppycock?

Kennicott writes: "...placed side by side, these two images begin to take on meaning, slowly, in counterpoint, in part because they seem weirdly uneasy in each other's presence. The proximity of something so serious (war) with something so trivial (celebrity sightings) should create sparks of cultural blasphemy. Enumerate everything these two images might possibly have in common, and you quickly find they resist each other almost like the poles of a magnet."

The story is really a fascinating read, one that shrewdly examines the widening chasm between serious journalism and celebrity obsession that has developed in the intervening years. Again, Kennicott's own words:

"But there is this: On both the basic, factual level and in a broader, more metaphysical sense, we made them. Kim Phuc's misery was the collateral damage of a war we made. Paris Hilton's vanity and fame and preposterous sense of entitlement is the collateral damage of a society we made. Before filing these two images into their proper categories -- the tragedy of war, the vacuity of the home front -- we should acknowledge the one thing they have in common at the deepest level. We own them, they are us, and they define the odd limits of our silly, foolish, bloody-minded species."

Another story that same day in the London Telegraph by John Preston, titled "Nick Ut: Double Negative," covers much the same ground, though it somewhat annoyingly fails to make the distinction, as Kennicott's does, that Nick is not a paparazzi but a working news photographer who, quite often, must cover the same celebrity events that the paparazzi are chasing. It is this intersection of serious journalism and frivolous tabloid pursuit that is at the heart of both pieces. (In fact, the beauty of Nick's Paris Hilton picture is that he not only beat the younger, rowdier paparazzi in getting THE picture but that he also made it seem carefully composed and thought out. Tabloid photographers want a picture; a photojournalist wants the picture.)

The Preston story does go a bit more into depth into Nick's lifelong relationship with Kim Phuc, the girl in his famous photo, now 44 and running a charity for children in Toronto. Seconds after making his photograph, which of course won him a Pulitzer, Nick did what any human being would do in a similar situation: he cared for her burns and drove her to a hospital where she would receive care. There's no issue of crossing lines or ethical boundaries here. Being a journalist doesn't mean one gets a Get Out of Jail Free card when it comes to being a compassionate human.

"Uncle Ut definitely saved my life," Kim Phuc tells Preston. "When we arrived at the hospital, the doctors all thought I was going to die. I had third-degree burns over 65 per cent of my body. After everything that had happened to me, he was the one person who restored my faith in human nature."

Only a few months back, the Los Angeles Times published an amazing two-part story by staff photographer Luis Sinco titled "Two Lives Blurred Together by a Photo." It examines the unique bond often shared by photographer and subject, in this case a weary Marine forever immortalized by Sinco as the "Marlboro Marine" of the Iraq war. One seemingly innocuous click of a shutter can change lives, as evidenced in Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers or Frank Johnston's devastating search for the haggard Marine in his famous Peace Church photo from Vietnam, a topic I discussed here a few months back. The road from obscurity to universal symbol is almost always fraught with land mines. In Sinco's case, the ambivalence he feels for "creating" a media icon of Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, no matter how well intentioned, ultimately leads to a near-intervention in Miller's post-Iraq plunge into PTSD. Like Nick decades earlier, Sinco treads carefully upon the line between journalistic objectivity and basic human compassion. I may have gotten him into this mess, can't I at least help him get out of it? he seems to be asking.

Well, what would a Dark Slide post be without just a bit of serendipity? As I was pondering these stories about Nick Ut and Luis Sinco et al. I received an email from one of my former bosses and mentors at USA Today, Frank Folwell, telling me he was leaving the paper after 21 years. Frank is another legend in photojournalism circles, someone who has led the nation's newspaper through every single technological advance of the last two decades--from an early analog transmitter in a Haliburton case called a Leafax through Sony Mavica still video cameras to today's megapixel-loaded Canons and Nikons. He's scouted every Olympic venue dating back to the ancient Greeks themselves and is as even-keeled as they come. (He came from the Des Moines Register, what do you expect?) All this without ever forgetting that it is always the photograph, not the technology, that is paramount.

So it's no surprise then that one of Frank's photographs, taken on a cold day in Croatia in 1991, is one that had an enormous impact on my development as a photographer. The photograph is of a little boy and a grandfather walking down a road, the old man lugging what has to be the sorriest Christmas tree since Charlie Brown presented his lame specimen to Linus and the gang. Of course the beauty of the image is that the little boy is beaming like he had just chopped down the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. War was ravaging his homeland and he has not a care in the world. Pure joy.

I'll never forget the day I saw that picture run in USA Today. It left such an impression on me--the juxtaposition of sadness and hope--that I knew right then and there that I was on the right path. The picture became a gold standard of mine for years, something I never told Frank all these years until we spoke last week.

Here's what Frank wrote:

I took the picture in December 1991 on the way to covering the massacre of 43 civilians by Serb paramilitaries in the small village of Vocin in Croatia.

It was ironic to encounter young Dario Rahle and his (step) grandfather Juro Botincan walking along with a newly-cut Christmas tree. At least one reason for the big smile might be that Christmas was not officially celebrated in communist Yugoslavia. Croatia had declared itself independent and despite an ongoing war, the citizens began to observe the holiday.

I think most readers were struck by the scraggly tree and Dario's jacket with the broken zipper. Several people sent me new jackets for him.

I got letters and calls for several years asking for copies of the photo and inquiring about how they could help Dario. In February 1992, Sherry and I took several boxes of gifts to the family - all sent by readers. Also, there was a pretty substantial amount of money sent to me that we were able to give the family. On our next visit we found they had bought a freezer, something that makes a big difference because they can preserve their produce and meats. They had chickens, geese, pigs etc.

Over the years we have tried to keep in touch with the family. Grandfather Juro has died. Dario was doing odd jobs since he could not get a job as a baker. We have tried to give him help and support but he is probably still doing day work.

In order to communicate we have to go to his home, which is a 90 minute drive from Zagreb. They don't have a phone and don't respond to mail. We hope to visit him this year.

Once again, a great photographer whose heart is in the right place. Photojournalism will no doubt face more and more pressure from its bastard cousin, the tabloid press. But the paparazzi don't care about their subjects any more than a seal hunter cares about the pup he's about to club. Great photographers like Nick Ut, Luis Sinco, Frank Johnston and Frank Folwell care and that's what will always separate the good guys from the mob. I'll leave it to Nick Ut, whose mastery of the English language has always been a source of good-natured ribbing from his colleagues, to wrap this up with what has to be the quote of the year, a simple yet staggering reflection:

"It's a strange feeling because I know I will never take another photograph that's as good as this - not as long as I live. When I look at my photograph of Kim and my photograph of Paris Hilton, I think they are both good pictures, in their way. I suppose the big difference is that I grew to love Kim, whereas… well, frankly, I don't give a damn about Paris Hilton."

Well said, Nicky.

Matt

Hapy New Year!

I'm rushing today as we're leaving for Paris shortly. As I mentioned in my last post, the French translation of my brother Daniel's book, "Les Disparus," recently won France's highest award for a non-French author. It's called the Prix Medicis and previous winners of the prize include Milan Kundera, Philip Roth and Umberto Eco. Daniel has some speaking engagements and we're going to go over and join in the fun.

(Paris in January may not be Paris in the springtime, but it's actually a nice time to visit. You can see the Mona Lisa as often as you like and drink hot chocolate at Angelina to your heart's content. The usual hour wait outside on the Rue de Rivoli vanishes.)

I didn't want to leave without posting a few pictures from the gorgeous Christmas wedding of Cara Magee and Patrick Leroy. I say Christmas but the wedding was actually on my birthday, December 22, which, for anyone born on the days immediately preceding and following Christmas will tell you, is a rotten time to be a kid. Everyone always assumes you get twice as much but most kids will tell you that there birthdays on those dates just get lost in the shuffle.

I won't tell you how old I am but the knees are starting to creak a bit. Put it this way: the other day ESPN Classic was showing Game 4 of the 1969 Wold Series between the Mets and the Orioles and I knew all the Met players by name. (My favorite piece of baseball trivia: Did you know that Tom Seaver once struck out 19 batters in a game, including the last ten in a row to end the game. Ten in a row!!!!!!!)

But I digress, as I always do.

Patrick and Cara had an absolutely gorgeous wedding at The Ritz Carlton in Washington. The weather was perfect, Christmas lights were everywhere, and the reception room at the Ritz looked like a ice palace.

I'm sure Cara has heard this many a time before, but she bears an uncanny resemblance to Arlington's very own Sandra Bullock. All brides are radiant on their wedding day; Cara just radiates at 110%. Like her lookalike, she has movie star thing going in spades. And while I've repeatedly told you all that I know as much about fashion as Borat, I do know that there's something about a winter wedding dress with a beautiful wrap. The white winter wrap always manages to conjure Dr. Zhivago for me, Lara and Boris on their way to the ice castle in Yuriatin.

Patrick and Cara were married at one of my favorite churches--I say favorite for purely selfish reasons--Holy Trinity in Georgetown. It's one of the few churches where no one bothers me (read: no dour church lady) and the light is nice and even. My assistant Matt, who was just married a month ago himself, was on hand to make the critical balcony coming-down-the-aisle-from-above picture.

(You could tell it was the weekend before Christmas because the street in front of Holy Trinity was devoid of cars. I assumed that there were emergency no parking signs up but it was simply that everyone was out of town! believe me, you don't see an empty street in Georgetown very often.)

Anyway, congratulations to Patrick and Cara on their beautiful wedding. They're in Tahiti right now, where I'm sure the tempertures are dipping into the 20's like they are here in Washington.

Also a big thank you to Cara's mom, Christine, who was so easy and fun to work with. And a reminder to Cara's brother, C. Max Magee, creator of one of the most impressive
literary blogs around, The Millions, to unwrap the copy of The Lost I sent-- the one that's gathering dust-- and start reading. :)


*****


Some housekeeping notes: I'll be out of town for the next week and half but I will have email access. Please don't leave phone messages, as the phone doesn't work over there. (Another reason to get an iPhone!)

If you're a prospective bride or groom looking to set-up an inteview, just shoot me a note and we'll meet in Old Town when I return. there are still a couple of dates open for 2008!

And finally, a big happy new year to all of you faithful readers. I never imagined that a blog could draw as much traffic as it does--and from so far away. Thanks for all your great comments and emails.



Matt


p.s. As always, double click the images for better viewing.

A list truly worth checking twice

We've been so busy trying to fulfill holiday orders that I was fairly certain I wouldn't have a chance to write again before the holidays. But then I happened upon Oprah's annual "Favorite Things" installment last week and I couldn't wait to get to the keyboard.

Now I like Oprah as much as the next guy. As wildly successful and rich people go, what's not to like? Her show is always fun to watch, whether it's Dr. Mehmet Oz dissecting a spleen or Tom Cruise self-destructing in mid leap. And her charity efforts in places like South Africa always get me teary-eyed. Oprah's okay with me.

Except, that is, for her annual holiday episode, in which the art of giving is always reduced to its most vulgar form. To see grown adults flailing away and gasping for air after being told that they're all receiving a set of plastic juice tumblers or the latest Mp3 player is just too much for me to handle. Yes, I know Oprah always handpicks the audience for this day of material worship, just like Willy Wonka and his golden tickets, and yes, I know the audience is always comprised of deserving people, but none of that lessens the degree of cringeworthiness I feel when watching each year. Perhaps it's not so much that audience members faint over being given juice tumblers; it's that they cheer and stomp usually only after being told the retail price of said gift. It's the declaration of price--the proof that their gift has value--that prompts the hysterics, not the gift itself.

There's not a lot more to be said about Oprah's Favorite Things episode. Saturday Night Live did the definitive parody years ago, complete with bodies being launched into the air, and not much has changed since. Oprah does spend a lot more time, it seems, reiterating that her favorite gifts are the ones that have no commercial value--"appreciation" is the greatest gift, she recently said--as if to lessen the obvious distaste that this one episode can conjure.

Seeing people hyperventilate over a free panini press (from Williams Sonoma, $99.95!) can only help focus oneself on the truly important things in life. We don't have a list of cookware we endorse here at Matt Mendelsohn World Headquarters, but we do have a list of favorite people who are deserving of your thoughts this holiday season. Forget about applauding for iPods--let's hear it for these people.
____________________________________________

Lindsay Ess

Over the years, I've been fortunate to work with a lot of fun and talented professionals in the wedding business. One of my favorites is Kim Giammaria, the best wedding make-up artist in the region. I've been bumping into Kim for years and years, from messy bedrooms in private homes to presidential suites at the Four Seasons. I always smile when I see her upon arriving, because I know that we'll have lots of good gossip to catch up on.

A few months back, Kim began telling me about an extraordinary young woman she was very close with named Lindsay Ess. Lindsay, 24, is a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, where she majored in fashion design. From all the stories I've heard from Kim, Lindsay is the kind of person you don't forget--beautiful, full of energy, and, most of all, always exuding kindness.

Lindsay went into the hospital this August for what should have been routine surgery to help her manage with her Crohn's Disease, a chronic inflammation of the digestive tract. But a few days later sepsis set in, an extremely serious condition in which organs begin failing. I'm no doctor, obviously, so I will instead direct you to a story about Linsday's condition in the Richmond Times-Dispatch here. The bottom line is that as a result of the sepsis and the circulation loss caused by it, Lindsay lost both her arms below the elbows and both her legs beneath her knees.

I know from Kim's frequent emails that Lindsay is both struggling and fighting mightily, something one could only expect from such a catastrophic event. Her emotional swings will be as tough to conquer as her physical needs. Lindsay was recently transferred to a rehab hospital in Baltimore where she will begin the very long road to recovery. She will need all the support she can get. A fund has been set up to help her family deal with what will likely be staggering medical costs. Visit her page at www.loveoflindsay.com. You can make donations to help directly online at the site. And even if you can't make a financial contribution, please sign the guest book and let Lindsay know you're thinking about her this holiday season.
_________________________________________________

Alexis Goggins

Alexis Goggins is not your average seven-year-old kid.

Earlier this month the young Detroit girl threw herself in front of her mother in order to protect her from a carjacker, a former boyfriend of her mom. When the gunman shot her mother in the front seat of their SUV, Alexis instinctively lept from the back of the car to protect her. Mom was shot twice, but it was little Alexis who bore the brunt of this violent crime. She was shot six times, with wounds to the temple, chin, arm, cheek, chest and eye. She lies in a Detroit hospital right now in critical condition, her eye already lost, though able to squeeze her mother's hand.

When I read about Alexis' plight last week I was amazed at her selflessness, even at such a young age. In the split-second before being shot those six times, Alexis yelled out the words that would make any parent weep: "Don't hurt my mother!" We live in a very sick society where roles are reversed and children must sacrifice their bodies to protect adults from gunmen.

In a world in which the word hero is applied perhaps a little too liberally these days, Alexis is the real deal. In reading editorials about her acts in newspapers around the country, I came upon these words by Lester Holmes, a writer for the Journal newspapers in Wayne, Michigan:

During the holidays we are told to express our love by buying the most expensive gifts we possibly can. While receiving a nice gift is memorable, there are expressions of true love from the young people in our lives that we pass by every day without acknowledgement.

The way your daughter seems to give you a hug after a hard day, even through you didn’t mention one word to her about what happened. How about the way your son tries to help you with the groceries despite the bag weighing more than he does?

While we are busy in our lives and sometimes view the eagerness of our children, nieces/nephews to help as more of a nuisance than assistance, maybe we just need to be grateful that they think of us so much that they want to help.

Just like Alexis, your child has no income. Just like Alexis, the child in your life finds a way to give an expression of love that trumps any gift money could.

Please keep Alexis in your thoughts this Christmas. Donations to a fund set up for her can be sent to the Alexis Goggins Hero Fund in care of Campbell Elementary School, 2301 E Alexandrine St, Detroit, MI 48207. And you can read more about her story here and here.

________________________________________________

Everyone who helped with Photo Marathon

I know I've said this many time before, but I really do feel incredibly lucky to have such a great client base. Over the past few years you guys have helped us raise money for MS research, tsunami relief, and, most generously, the college funds of several young children whose fathers were killed in Iraq. I can't believe that I'm even typing this, but we're right around $45,000 in money donated to these great causes. $45,000!!!

I want to thank all of you who have pitched in to help, from strangers donating money to friends buying coffee and doughnuts. I never dreamed that giving away money would become part of my job description as a portrait photographer but now that is, I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. To Laura Gonzalez, Julie Newell, Bill Auth, Carolyn Alers, Matthew Girard, the folks at Alpha Fotoworks and Black and White, and all the wedding and portrait clients who keep returning each year to donate money, I thank you deeply.

A special thanks to Charlotte Freeman, the wife of Capt. Brian Freeman, who was killed in Iraq this past January. We don't deposit any money raised from our Photo Marathons, instead opting to send our beneficiaries all the checks we collect. It ends up being a lot of checks, mailed in one FedEx shipment. I've been getting a lot of calls of late describing the touching thank you note they've received from Charlotte. I never expected--or wanted--her to have to write so many notes. But the fact that she has speaks volumes about her character.

Lastly, to my wife, Maya, who not only puts up with my crazy ideas on things like Photo Marathon but has to process all the images to boot. I wouldn't be able to do it without you.

Happy Holidays to all!!!


Matt

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli

Years ago, I went to see an exhibit at the Corcoran entitled "What Remains," by the legendary photographer Sally Mann. Usually associated with provocative large format images of her children, this time Mann had turned her camera to a more ethereal subject, the paradox of what effect time and the earth have on our bones, and, conversely, what effect our bones have on the earth and time.

I was fascinated (and grossed out, truth be told) by Mann's haunting images of femurs and fibulas slowly turning into ash. In a peculiar twist, an escaped convict was shot and killed on Mann's Virginia farm and she began photographing the spot where the man had died, looking for any clues that the earth changes just a bit each time it witnesses such an event. Not exactly a crowd-pleasing topic, but Mann has never been one for pleasing crowds. Years after seeing that exhibit, the concept of "what remains" has stayed with me with me longer than the photograph themselves.

It certainly popped to the surface the other day after a series of bizarre coincidences had unfolded. As you all know, bizarre coincidences follow me almost as much as my neighbor's cat, Sparkle. I sometimes feel like Rod Serling is going to pop out from a corner and tell me that it's all been one long Twilight Zone episode.

So the other day was November 13th. It was Cooper the Wonder Dog's 10th birthday. Did I remember? Of course not. I reminded myself to remember all week but forgot when the actual day came around. The funny part is that the night before, on November 12th, I stumbled upon my 1997 pocket diary. I have no idea why it suddenly turned up on my nightstand, though I'm assuming the cleaning ladies found it in the closet or something. So there I was, sitting on my bed, perusing this ten-year-old artifact of dates and contacts, a glimpse back into every appointment and assignment I had that year. According to my book, on January 20th I photographed the inauguration, on April 22 I met the Dali Lama while shoting an assignment on Larry King, and on October 7th I went out to buy a silly rocking horse for a Chris Rock shoot the next day at the Four Seasons hotel. Don't ask. I laughed as I tried to figure out who half the names in the address book belonged to. It's both amazing and disheartening to realize just how many people were prominent in your life ten short years ago, people whose whereabouts today are a total mystery.

Anyway, there I am looking at this freshly certified relic, when I thought I should see what I was doing exactly ten years ago. The answer should have been obvious: We were arriving, at 7:35 a.m on Air France 29, in Paris for our honeymoon. The only other notation was for the next day, November 13, a big asterisk that said "Katy Kelly's BD!" (It didn't say "Cooper's birthday," obviously, because there's no way I could have known Cooper was about to be born the next day.)

Katy is a great friend of mine, dating back to my USA Today days. We used to go out on assignments together in the early 1990's. Then one night we had to drive to Baltimore to cover a convention of adults who collect Barbie dolls and we haven't stopped laughing since. And since I forget so many birthdays, I felt like there was some divine influence at work here. I thought, how cool is this, I would have never remembered Katy's birthday the next day if not for finding this ten-year-old date book.

Well, guess what? I forgot to call Katy the next day. So now I'm 0 for 2. I forgot my dog Cooper's birthday, as well as the birthday of my friend Katy. Serendipity, shmerendipity.

And what does this have to do with "What Remains?" Well, on the day before my day of forgetting things, I happened to bump into a friend on the street in Georgetown. I was crossing R Street into Montrose Park, a place I've shot so many portraits over the years that Sally Mann might want to come over and see what effect one playground can have on an individual, when my friend Alexandra Kovach pulled up and said hi. Alexandra is in charge of events at Evermay, just down the block, one of the most beautiful places one can be married in Washington. It's an old mansion in Georgetown that oozes a different kind of history than most other important landmarks in our nation's capital. Unlike, say, neighboring Dumbarton House, with its Federal era mannequins and its Society of Colonial Dames, Evermay's history is all family, all personal.

Evermay was home to the Belin family for much of the last century and their presence can be felt all over the grounds, including the final resting place of several family members. Photographs of the Belins can be seen all throughout the house, from the day in 1923 they moved in to some of the overseas conferences Mary Belin, the family matriarch, attended when she was a translator for the State Department in the 1930's. (An accomplished tennis player, she also played on center court at Wimbledon in 1938!)

Every time I photograph a wedding at Evermay I find myself staring at Belin family photos all day long. There's something about the staying power of one single image, of one fleeting moment in a family's life, that makes me marvel. It's the opposite effect of walking into a Pottery Barn and seeing all the living room setups lined with fake books and fake photos. At Evermay, all of those people in the pictures actually once called this place their home. This isn't a museum, it's a home. And without the photographs, it would just be another venue.

And so the day after my day of forgetting meaningful things, I Googled Alexandra Kovach to get her number at Evermay and follow up on our chance. But Google gave me something other than a phone number.

The first thing it listed was a story written in the Washington Post by one Alexandra Kovach, titled, "What Fire Couldn't Destroy." Intrigued, I began reading. Dated October 27, just a couple weeks ago, when fires were ravaging Southern California, the story is a first-hand account of the effects another terrible fire, the Oakland Hills wildfire of 1991, had on a little girl. Kovach writes:

I still visualize our house on Vicente Road. I have dreams that take place there. I can still feel the lace on my mother's wedding veil, which my sisters and I would sneak out of its box when we were little girls with big ideas. Or the texture of my parents' bedspread, as we read "The Wind in the Willows," leaving my dreams filled with visions of Mr. Toad floating down the river, night after night. And that giant box where my mother would proudly store the artistic treasures we brought home from school. I would love to see now, or to show my children one day, how I drew the sun when I was 5.

Before I could even finish I picked up the phone and called Alexandra.

"Hey, funny bumping into you on the street yesterday. Um, I was trying to find your number and I Googled you and found this beautiful and sad story about the Okaland Hills fire of 1991. Is that you??" (I mean, how many Alexandra Kovach's can there be, right?)

"I did write that," she said.

"Um, you won't believe this, but I was there that day," I said. "I covered the Oakland Hills fire. I was up from Los Angeles for the Cal football game. I've never seen anything like that. There were only chimneys left as far as the eye could see."

Just another coincidence in my life. Here is someone I know writing movingly about a fire that took her childhood home away in a flash--and with it all her toys and books and photographs--and it turns out I was in the very same place those sixteen years ago, looking at the same devastation, though from a very different perspective. 3,000 homes were burned that day in 1991 and now I felt odd, hoping that Alexandra's house wasn't one of the ones I photographed.

And if you think the Rod Serling stuff is over, think again.

Like many of the people who asked me when my own piece was in the Washington Post in September, I asked Alexandra how she came to write the story for the Post. She told me that she had mulled it over while watching the news, but that it was reading my story in the Post that gave her the courage to pursue it. I was floored. Even by my standard of coincidence and serendipity, this was getting downright spooky.

If you haven't already, please read Alexandra's touching essay. It goes right to the core of "What Remains." What do we keep? What do we lose? What are the remainders?

As Alexandra tells it, the only photo album her family was able to save from the burning house was the one that she and her sister had made of "reject" pictures no one else wanted to save. The ones with the bad expressions, the bad complexions, the eyes closed.

"Overnight, these snapshot disasters became our greatest treasures. Today's digital photos can be modified or erased within seconds of being taken, wiping away all signs of human imperfection. These albums had held the outtakes of our lives so far, but in their flaws, they were true testimony to the children we were and the adults we became, making them all the more precious."

For years I've been trying to explain to people the importance of photos that are real, not staged and manipulated. I've bitten my tongue when the occasional wedding client rejects a stupendous photo because his or her hair was out of place, or when a Georgetown mother rejects a gorgeous photo of her child because he has a scrape on his chin. You're missing the forest for the trees, I usually mumble to myself. And now Alexandra Kovach, the friend who I bumped into on the street that day in Georgetown, a chance encounter that caused me to Google her, an internet search that led to the discovery that her own home was burned to the ground in a fire sixteen years earlier, a fire I witnessed, and an emotional story she felt confident in relating partly because of my story in a newspaper sixteen years later, that Alexandra Kovach was now perfectly summing up my very own feelings about photography itself.

One of the great ironies of the digital era is that in the end, only paper will survive. Faced with raging fire, no one ever runs to save their hard drive. People run to save their photographs. A photograph on a laptop is data. But when printed on paper it is a relic, a prized possesion. It's these photographs that have so much meaning to us, the ones that we put in frames and tape to our monitors and store in the attic. The printed photograph will never die, even in 2057, when we're all driving flying cars and the metric system will have finally arrived, because it will always have one leg up on its digital counterpart. Like humans, the printed picture is alive, gets beat up, and becomes frail and brittle over time. Data is just that--data.

She may not have thought much about this, but I now realize that Alexandra is the perfect person to be at Evermay, a house filled with so many important family photos. In fact, each time I'm photographing a wedding at Evermay, I feel drawn to read and re-read the same letter that is on display in one of the cases. It's a letter from Harry Belin to another family member describing the night he went to pick up his son who was arriving from Germany. Something terrible happened that night. Thankfully the son survived, but the account of the tragedy is so gripping, so riveting in its fountain pen cursive script on yellowed and torn paper, that I often drag wedding guests over to make sure they've seen it. It's incredible: The fire, the "burning hulk crashing to the ground," the desperate search for and reunion with family.

Oh, did I mention? The Belin boy was on the Hindenburg.



Matt

p.s. Speaking of important keepsakes, the pictures that accompany this post are all from last month's Photo Marathon. Click them to make them bigger.

The Great Joni Mitchell Cover-up

A rant, a rant and a rave tonight.

And to get to those items faster, I'll dispense quickly with the obligatory apologies for taking so long to blog. As I said last time, this is crazy time in the life of any photographer, the holidays just around the corner, and I've been a tad busy. This past weekend, for instance, I shot seven portrait jobs. Like I said, a tad busy.

Now that's we're clear on that, on to rant number one.

Many of you know that I'm a bit of a Joni Mitchell nut. To say that I consider Joni to be a part of my family--as odd as that sounds--would not be a stretch. I've listened to Blue so many thousands of times in the past 25 years that I sometimes think I'm the one who needs a river to skate away on. Like a security blanket, Joni is always there for me. From Hejira's Coyote (love that Bay of Fundy) to Turbulent Indigo's Magdalene Laundries, I've stayed true. None of this fair weather stuff. (That great scene in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, where the space aliens tell him that they love his films--"especially," says the martian, "the early funny ones.") Nope. I've been with Joni for the long haul.

Now, friends can be hard on a lifelong Joni fan. You get teased in ways that, say, a lifelong Bruce Springsteen fan might not. One friend who shall remain nameless, unless, of course, you've read my last blog entry, has accused me of listening to "mopey chick music." Fair enough. Coupled with my love for Aimee Mann and Nanci Griffith and Gillian Welch (the mopiest of them all--Maya once attempted to throw herself from the car when Gillian started singing The Revelator) I guess I can see the argument. But Joni isn't really mopey at all. I mean, how could you not love someone who can write like this:

I met a redneck on a Grecian Isle/ He did the goat dance very well/ He gave me back my smile/ But he kept my camera to sell.

When I read in the New York Times recently that Joni was set to release a new album, Shine, as well as lend her songs to a new work by the Alberta Ballet, I was excited. I wasn't too thrilled to learn that the album was being marketed exclusively on Starbuck's Hear Music label, as corporate synergy has worn me down of late, but excited nonetheless.

So a week or so ago, as I waited for my venti hot chocolate at the Macarthur Blvd. Starbucks, a joint where the baristas work so damn hard and still get your order wrong all the time, I noticed the album for the first time. I scooped it up, knowing I had a nine hour drive to Savannah in front of me, and hit the road.

That's when Maya noticed the cover. Or should I say cover-up?

The cover of Shine is a beautiful photograph of dancers with the Alberta Ballet engaged in a lunar leap of sorts. It's evocative, it's moody, and it's a noticeable departure from many of Joni's albums that feature her own artwork. I feel ridiculous stating this, but for the record, the muscular male dancers are all wearing tights. There is not a nude body to be found.

But in the spirit of John Ashcroft, who was so offended by the sight of a woman's breast that he ordered a new set of drapes, someone at Starbucks clearly has some issues. How else can one explain the hideous band of blue paper that covers, quite neatly, every single tush in the photograph? It's as if buying a Joni Mitchell album has suddenly become akin to leaving an adult bookstore with a paper-clad girlie magazine.

Would someone wake me when this all ends? Have we become so absurdly prudish as a society that the bodies of male dancers--clothed!!!--can't be shown on an album cover? Is someone worried that a child might see these dancers and, god forbid, dream about going into the arts? Nigel Tufnel couldn't understand why the "Smell the Glove" cover was censored in This is Spinal Tap. But that was a movie farce--this is real life.

I went back into Starbucks to see if any other album they sold had an added "wrapper," but couldn't find one. And to head off any explanation that the wrap was added to give more visual clarity for sales purposes, Joni's own Blue, which features one of the hardest to read titles of any album--blue on blue type--is also sold at Starbucks, sans wrapper.

That someone in the corporate world would actually worry that ballet dancers' derrieres might be offensive--only in America, right?--is not surprising. But I am very surprised that Joni would go along with such a harebrained scheme. We're talking about a woman who, by her own admission, didn't go near a piano for the last ten years because she so despised the record industry. Et tu, Joni?

Back in the late 1970's, when I was attending Mattlin Junior High School on Long Island, a music teacher named Miss Sparrow was trying her best to be hip. She was teaching a lesson about "modern" music and was about to play Jimi Hendrix's version of the Star Spangled Banner. (Other favorites included overly deep analysis of the Beatles' incredibly simple "Michelle.") But before she let the needle drop onto the record player (record player!), Miss sparrow cautioned our class that the music we were about to hear was so powerful that we could be potentially be harmed. As if she was about to give us all LSD, she dutifully asked if anyone wanted to leave the room. One of my classmates, David L., sheepishly raised his hand and left.

Jimi Hendrix would no doubt get a kick to learn that ballet dancers have joined his club.

Rant #2.

Last night Maya and I went to see Bruce Springsteen, courtesy of my friend and former bride, Laura Gonzalez. Laura knows that I'm as big a Bruce fan as I am a Joni Mitchell nut. I won't forget her kindness very soon.

The concert was sublime. I first saw Bruce at the Carrier Dome in 1985, on the Born in the USA tour, and it's hard to think that almost 22 years have past since that show. And even if I factor in the handful of times I've seen Bruce since that first show, none of them can top last night. Sure, the Verizon Center felt a tad geriatric, as middle aged bald guys maneuvered down the stairs clutching their beers, but big deal. The true believers showed a little faith and there truly was magic in the night. As Jon Stewart said last night, a Springsteen concert is about nothing but pure joy.

(Alexandra's great parlor trick, as four-year-old parlor tricks go, has always been her rendition of Thunder Road. I love the way she blissfully skips past lines like "Lying out there like a killer in the sun...")





As the show progressed, Backstreets morphed into Thunder Road. Thunder Road into Born to Run. All the anthems you could have asked for, and all framed by the incredibly powerful songs off the new album. I'm not sure what constitutes an instant classic, but I was almost moved to tears by Devil's Arcade, a heartbreaking song told from the perspective of an Iraqi war widow.

Remember the morning we dug up your gun
The worms in the barrel, the hanging sun
Those first nervous evenings of perfume and gin
The lost smell on your breath as I helped you get it in
The rush of your lips, the feel of your name
The beat in your heart, the devil's arcade

So, if everything was as great as you describe, Matt, what's to rant about?

Cell phones. And for a laugh, not because of their noise.

As if I didn't have to deal with enough dopes and their ever-ringing cellphones at weddings each week, I now can't go see a live music event without seven hundred people holding up their phones for the entire event, all of them trying to not-so-secretly record some absurdly low-res video to post on YouTube. Do these people know how incredibly distracting this is? (Or do they even care?) For the record, I don't want to watch Bruce Springsteen as he is illuminated by the ever-present glow of your cell phone's LED display. I want to watch Bruce Springsteen, live and in front of me, not reduced to some minuscule mpeg movie.

I know, just forget it, Matt, watch the show. But it's really hard to watch the show when the guy in front of you is holding up a lit phone for two hours. And for what? Is there really so much of a rush posting a grainy, inaudible video clip for one's cell phone on the internet? And this was in a huge arena. I've seen the same thing happen at the Birchmere, an intimate music hall that seats only a couple of hundred. The room is dark, the mood is electric, and there's that damn glow of a cell phone being held aloft. Argh.

I always made fun of the tourists who arrived at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and descended from their tour buses with cameras in front of their faces. Didn't they want to just look at the canyon for a minute before they started snapping? It's not like it's going anywhere. But there's an odd obsession with capturing something, with taking something back with you. It makes no difference that the video is jerky and pixelated and garbled. You've got a little bit of Bruce in a bottle, and if it means pissing off the hundreds of people around you for a few hours, well, by god, it's worth it.

The old commercial used to go, is it live or is it Memorex? The implication was that the tape was so good it practically felt like you were there. These days I'm convinced that more people would just rather have the tape.

*****

And now, finally, a couple of raves.

Yesterday, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (or Les Disparus, as it's known in Paris), by my brother, Daniel Mendelsohn, was awarded the Prix Médicis étranger, France's most prestigious award for a work by a foreign author. To give you an idea of the company Daniel is now in, previous winners of this prize include Milan Kundera, Umberto Eco, Philip Roth and Doris Lessing (who just won the Nobel Prize for literature a few weeks back). Not bad.

In a country that takes reading quite seriously, Daniel was treated like royalty. He dined last night across form the former prime minister, who insisted that he be seated next to Daniel, as well as greeted by microphones and cameras the minute he steeped into the hotel. If you're going to have your fifteen minutes, you might as well have them in Paris.

Congratulations, Daniel.

***

We've all been working hard here at Matt Mendelsohn World Headquarters. We have two new employees, Katie Persons and Ashley Dally, whom we hope will speed up our workflow a bit. Ashley hails from Defiance, Ohio and will tell you the entire history of that town if you ask her. So don't get her started. Katie has only been with us a short time and she's already chchangedur lives by introducing us to www.pandora.com, a site that instantly creates a personalized radio station based on your musical preferences. Really neat.

But without a doubt, the hardest worker has been Maya. She has the tough job of making every image look as good as it can. And I can say that our images have never looked better. Most people don't understand the digital process very much, their only point of reference being the old days of dropping film at a lab. But these days there frequently is no lab. We're the lab. And all of the care that a lab once gave to making images look beautiful has now fallen back to the photographer.

It's counter intuitive, I know, but most digital images require more, not less, work than their film cousins. Every image we process gets intensive individual care to bring out contrast, tonality and vibrance. There are no quick fixes.

So I'll leave you tonight, as the clock here strikes 2:00 a.m., with some of our fall portraits.

































































Take care. (And, as always, double-click the images for better viewing.)




Matt

Four Weddings and a Fundraiser

Yes, I know it's been far too long between posts.

I know this because my sister Jennifer will usually call me after a certain period of time has elapsed and whisper into my ear, "Um, I think you need to blog again." But I don't need Jennifer to tell me this. It's been a very busy month--one which started with our annual fundraiser, Photo Marathon, not to mention four consecutive weddings and oodles of portrait sessions. I love to keep this blog, as you all know, but the folks at the Dep't. of Tail Wagging The Dog keep reminding me that it's the taking of photos--not the writing about the taking of photos--that pays the bills around this joint. Hence the slight delay in posts.

So let's get right to the great news: Photo Marathon '07 was a huge success. In one day of shooting portraits we raised....(drum roll, please)....$10,800! Yup, that's right. Today I had the pleasure of mailing two FedEx envelopes containing the entire proceeds to two very deserving families. The children of Capt. Christopher Petty and Capt. Brian Freeman, both killed in Iraq, will have those funds to use for their college educations. All four children are very young and it's my hope that this money will have ample time to grow in the bank.

Photo Marathon would not have been possible without the kindness of all of you who took part--including those who couldn't be present at the studio but still sent in donations. Every year I do this I'm truly floored by the generosity I witness. Whether former brides and grooms, friends and neighbors or total strangers, people always rise to the occasion.

For the first time we even had a little media coverage! Fox News and Newschannel8 both came out and did little features on Photo Marathon. We also had some very special visitors: Capt. Petty's dad happened to be in D.C. that morning and stopped by, moving all of us to tears as we watched some home movies Chris had made in Iraq. Later in the day his mom stopped by as well. We thank them both.

For any of you who still want to help out, you can always mail a check payable to either the Owen and Oliver Petty College Fund or the Brian Freeman Memorial Fund to me at: Matt Mendelsohn Photography, 3823 N. Chesterbrook Road, Arlington, VA 22207. I'm more than happy to forward them along.

(You'll remember that Capt. Freeman spent months trying to secure a visa for a little Iraqi boy who needed heart surgery in America. And Capt. Petty was involved in school rebuilding at the time of his death. You can still read this emotional piece about Capt. Freeman here in the Washington Post, as well as this follow up story about Charlotte Freeman meeting the boy, Ali, after his successful surgery in New York. And for more information about Capt. Petty, please go here.)

Photo Marathon kicked off October with a bang. That same weekend I had the pleasure of photographing the wedding of Samantha Sterling and Chris McCormack in downtown Baltimore. As I walked into Sam's hotel room and saw her adjusting her dress underneath this striking painting hanging on the wall, I knew things were going to be great. It reminded me of a perfect scene straight out of Vermeer.

After a ceremony at St. Leo's in Fells Point, we all headed over to the Peabody Library, the site of my sister's wedding many years ago, for a great reception. If you haven't been there, the Peabody is really one of the most stunning venues in this area. Floor upon floor of bookstacks, crowned with a gorgeous conservatory ceiling, it is simply breathtaking.

A few months back, after shooting their engagement picture, I wrote about how much respect I have for nurses like Sam. Their dedication and professionalism is always something I admire. It was a pleasure returning the favor.

Next up was the wedding of Jennifer Dlouhy and Christopher Doering. Jennifer is a journalist and it was fun bumping into my friend--and great photographer-- Linda Creighton at St. Peter's on Capitol Hill. (St. Peter's is one of my favorite churches for purely selfish reasons: it is bright and airy inside, a stark contrast to most other Catholic churches of that era.)

Like Chris and Sam, Jen and Chris opted for a classic reception venue, the grandeur of the headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution. A stone's throw from the White House, DAR is a regal place for a wedding if ever there was. Guests drank cocktails outside, always in the shadow of the Washington Monument. And as the sun started to set, Jen and Chris danced their first dance amid the soaring white columns of the portico. It's no wonder the producers of The West Wing used to use DAR as a White House stunt double!

And we're only halfway!

The next day was a new experience for me. After ten years, one thinks he's seen every venue Washington has to offer, but that wasn't the case with the wedding of Sarah Greenberger and Matthew Engel. They threw me for a loop by choosing the fantastic Music Center at Strathmore. Located in North Bethesda, Strathmore Music Center is a 1,976 seat concert hall, home to the Baltimore Symphony and its dynamic new conductor, Marin Alsop. The first woman to lead a major American concert orchestra, Alsop has re-energized the BSO. (I had to laugh, too, when I read in the program that she's a big fan of John Adams' incredible opera Nixon in China. Name aside, it's one of my favorite works. I listen to it constantly, though it drives Maya crazy. If she could just get past the name, I think she'd love it.)

Anyway, Sarah and and Matt had a glorious day for their outdoor ceremony. It's been absurdly hot this fall in Washington, a trend that forebodes terrible things for our gardens and lawns but has provided for a rain-free streak of weddings going back several months. Lucky for everyone, the ceremony was late in the afternoon, just as the temperatures found a perfect comfort level. And as Sarah was led down the aisle by her mother and father, the setting sun (notice a trend here?) perfectly backlit her veil, providing one of those moments where I whisper to myself, my Canon 5D clicking along, "Ohhh, this is killer light."

(One other thing: I am the last person you want commenting on fashion. The folks at Project Runway would gasp if they knew that my wardrobe, outside of weddings, consisted of mainly jeans and t-shirts. But I have to say that Sarah had one of the most beautiful dresses I've seen in a long time. Bucking the strapless trend of the last few years, it was something right out of a Greek myth. Way cool.)

Okay, gang, almost there!

I can't forget the fabulous Virginia wedding of Christina Princi and Michael Outten, who were married on October 13. Both graduates of Mr. Jefferson's university, Michael and Christina had a UVA blowout, culminating, quite amusingly, with all the guests dancing the Virginia Reel, a dance that dates back to 1695! (My sister, also a UVA grad, would have explained the whole thing to me. She was a guide back in her Charlottesville days.)

So stay with me: it is hard enough for a DJ to keep everyone happy at a reception. After all, some folks like Cole Porter while others prefer hip-hop and rock. And it's not the easiest thing in the world transitioning from "I Get a kick Out of You" to "Sweet Home, Alabama." So if you told me that someone could get an entire wedding reception to stop dancing to "I Will Survive" and start do-si-do'ing to Thomas Jefferson's favorite line dance, the hot, hot, hot Virginia Reel, I would said you were crazy. But it happened.

Thanks to the energy of one of Michael and Christina's college friends, who looked like he was going to have a coronary as he shouted instructions to guests, everyone learned the required steps. And those steps, I should add, are far more complicated than your average Arthur Murray routine. I was trying to focus but I could swear I heard instructions to "stare your partner down like a bull." Maybe I got it wrong. Anyway, my first thought upon seeing this commotion was to echo the words of my four-year-old, Alexandra, whose favorite saying these days is "this is not going to be good." But you know what? It was great. People were, as they say, a-whoopin and a-hollerin. Thomas Jefferson would have been proud.

And there you have it: four weddings and a fundraiser. Not a bad three weeks!

Once again, a big thanks to everyone involved in Photo Marathon. We'll do it all again next year, hopefully under the auspices of our new 501(c)(3), The Bronia Fund, named in memory of my twelve-year-old cousin killed in the Holocaust. Look for details here.

Thanks for reading, and, as always, double-click the images for better viewing.




Matt

Something in the water

When Scott Claffee and Lily Fu told me many months ago that they were planning on getting married on the Jersey Shore, my ears pricked up a bit. When she was twelve, my wife Maya and her mom moved back from their home in Athens, Greece. Though they settled in Port St. Lucie, Florida, they spent many a summer on the Jersey Shore, the stomping grounds of Maya's grandparents, Joseph and Gladys Catenaci.

Joseph Catenaci, who turns a healthy 94 today, was in the construction business after World War II, among many other things, building sewers and jetties on Long Beach Island. (He also worked on the Verazzano Narrows Bridge, which I think is incredibly cool.) Known simply as LBI these days, Long Beach Island was, in 1948, a far cry from what we now think of when someone says "Jersey Shore." Largely undeveloped back then, Grandpa Catenaci and his workmen would stay at the only hotel on the island that was open all year long, Wida's, which is no longer there.

(Oddly, I'm told the toughest time on the island was after the Storm of '62, the year I happened to have been born. My mother always told me that I was born in a blizzard, on Long Island, so I'm sure it must have been that same storm.)

Even today, after decades of development, Long Beach Island is still a much simpler place than its counterparts like Asbury Park in the north or Atlantic City to the south. Other than the occasional Ben and Jerry's or 7-Eleven, just about every restaurant and store on LBI is family owned and operated. There is no Chili's, no Applebees, no McDonalds.

So when Scott and Lily told me they were contemplating a shore wedding, I asked them where exactly?

Long Beach Island, they said excitedly.

Well, add another notch in the serendipity belt.

It turns out that Scott's family has deep roots in Long Beach Island as well. For decades, they've been coming to the same tiny cottage originally purchased by his grandparents, Charles and Florence Peterson. And when I say cottage, I mean cottage. If you've ever been to Corrolla, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and have stayed in one of the beautiful homes on the ocean that sleep 34, shake your head and erase your memory. Long Beach Island doesn't have homes that sleep 34. In fact, some of the homes are so tiny--perfectly preserved artifacts of a post-war era--that they barely sleep 3.4. And that's what makes them so charming.

Scott's family comes back each year to the Cum-a-Dee, named so because when his grandfather's grandfather, with a thick accent, would call to one of his grandchildren to "come to me," it would come out as simply as "cum-a-dee."

Scott's grandfather, known affectionately as Pop-Pop, the same term of endearment that my daughter refers to her great-grandfather with, passed away earlier this year. But given that he was such a fixture on Long Beach Island, one can only assume that he and Maya's grandfather surely must have crossed paths at some point, during one summer or another. After all, they both were born in the same year, 1913, and both married for a period of time that often feels like a typo: Charles and Florence for seventy years, Joe and Gladys for seventy-two. Seventy-two years! There must be something in the water.

The morning of Scott and Lily's wedding, on a glorious off-season beach day, I drove down the island a bit, to the Holgate section, where Maya's grandfather once lived. I wanted to take a photo of his last house. I knew I was close when I saw the street sign for "Joan Road." After all, the "Joan" of Joan Road is my mother-in-law, Joan Vastardis. It's neat to have a street named for you.

(Two weeks ago, in a post here, I joked about the mysterious circumstance surrounding how Maya and her mom came into possession of the street sign from their neighborhood in Athens. I have since been assured that there was nothing nefarious about its acquisition. Apparently the sign was in a pile of construction rubble. As for Joan Road, well, that sign is municipal property.)

I drove a block or so further and came upon a group of older men, all laughing as they chatted. I asked them if they knew which house once belonged to Joe Catenaci and they laughed.

"All of them!" one joked.

We talked for a while and they shared some nice stories.

"Joe Catenaci was the only man to ever say anything nice about my boat," one remarked. I though that was sweet. One of the other men described him as "the prince" of LBI. I got out my cell phone and called my mother-in-law so she could say hello. Small world.

Lily and Scott were married later that day. As we drove from the church to the reception, a hip hotel named Daddy-O, I tried to avoid flying out of Scott's brother's convertible. I've learned from my daughter that it's hard to take pictures while standing backwards on a carousel. It's even harder to stand backwards in a moving car, on a windy day, while trying to photograph a bride and groom. It seems fun, but it's actually quite tricky.

During their dinner, as the sun set on the sound side of the island, we made a quick decision to try and get a picture. Luckily, the distance on some parts of Long Beach island from ocean to sound is about, oh, one quarter of a mile. We raced across the street and with not more than sixty seconds to spare made a beautiful picture. A minute later we would have missed it.

The morning after the wedding, I stopped into Ferarra's Bakery (the yellowed newspaper clipping on the wall from decades earlier told me this place has seen a lot of history) and bought some of their "famous" stuffed breads. I then met up with Scott, Lily and the whole Claffee clan outside the Cum-a-dee. We took some pictures on the beach and I began the drive back to D.C., glad to have had this brief nostalgic weekend.

Today, while mentioning this column to my mother-in-law, she laughed at the mention of Wida's, that island hotel where her father had stayed so many nights, so many decades ago.

"You know what Daddy-O used to be, don't you? That used to be Wida's!"

Small world.


Matt



























p.s. Stay tuned for a wrap-up of last week's Photo Marathon, a great success! And as always, double-click on the images for better viewing.

Happy birthday, Grandpa!!

Photo Marathon '07 is here!!

Well, if there's one bride I know who will forgive me for hijacking her wedding story with a fundraising plea, it's Lisa Butenhoff. Why? Because Lisa works for one of the truly great Washington charitable organizations, Food and Friends, a non-profit that has been serving meals to people with HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses for almost twenty years.

I know a lot about the great work that Food and Friends does. For many years I rode my bicycle alongside thousands of others in order to help Food and Friends provide their services. Starting with a Philadelphia to Washington three-day ride in 1996, I pedaled thousands of miles over the years to help Food and Friends and organizations just like it. In the end, I did three Raleigh/Durham-Washington rides and three New York/Boston rides in six years. And in the process I got to know lots of folks from Food and Friends, the greatest of whom is Craig Shniderman, the organization's director. Craig is not the kind of guy who lets thousands of people ride hundreds of miles without breaking a sweat himself. On the contrary, Craig rode the same 275 miles in three days that the rest of us rode. And always with a smile.

When Lisa told me where she worked many months ago, I knew we would click. She and her husband, Derek Bandera, had a wonderful wedding last week, on yet another glorious weather weekend (unless, that is, you ask my dying front lawn) without rain. This drought we're suffering through here is terrible for a lot of reasons, but as for wedding photography, I can't exactly argue.

Like so many of my brides, Lisa is the kind of person who just radiates laughter and warmth. She could be addressing envelopes or taking out the trash and she'd still be smiling. Couple that personality with the organization she works for--nine million meals served to over 13,000 clients in the past 19 years--and you feel somewhat humbled.

That's why I say that Lisa would be the last person to object to me using her "space" here to talk about our own fundraising day, Photo Marathon. We may not have the organizational power of Food and Friends, but our hearts are in the same place.

So let's go to the point: Photo Marathon is here! Starting this Sunday, 9/30 at 9:00 a.m., I'll be shooting portraits all day, nonstop. Every individual or family coming to Photo Marathon will be asked to donate $250 directly to the college funds of the children of Capt. Brian Freeman and/or Capt. Christopher Petty. In return for your kindness, you'll receive a signed and dated 11 x 14 print.

A word about our beneficiaries: These two brave men were both killed in Iraq, roughly one year apart, and neither was content to simply do his job adequately. Both men went above and beyond their mission. Capt. Freeman spent months and months trying to secure a visa for an Iraqi boy in need of heart surgery in the U.S. The day that visa was finally approved, Capt. Freeman was killed. Similarly, Capt. Petty was involved in a school rebuilding project when he was killed.

These two men left four young children behind. As I said last week, we're going to honor their efforts to help children in faraway lands by helping their own children back here in America.

To read more about Capt. Freeman, go here.

To read more about Capt. Petty, go here.

So please drop on by this Sunday. You don't need a time slot--we're just going to go as fast as we can! And if you can't come by, please consider making a donation anyway. Mail a check made payable to either the Brian Freeman Memorial Fund or the Oliver and Owen Petty College Fund and mail it to me at 3823 N. Chesterbrook Road, Arlington, Virginia, 22207.

For those of you who are planning on participating, a few reminders:

Photo Marathon is a charity event, first and foremost. This is NOT a replacement for a full-blown portrait session with me. Think of it more as an opportunity to help four young children with a cool souvenir attached. As we've done in the past, we'll shoot portraits as fast as possible to accommodate everyone. This is a speed-a-thon for a great cause. Please don't come with special requests!!

Also, please remember to leave the ties and jackets at home. This should be a relaxed portrait, not a stuffy one. Dark colors work better bright whites and solids much better than busy patterns. And finally, please limit the number of people in one portrait to around four. We'll give you instructions on which fund to write your check (we'll simply alternate) and how to get your print. (We'll schedule a pick up date sometime next month. If you want your print mailed, please bring $6 to cover shipping.)

Other than that, come on down. Bring your dog, bring your boyfriend, bring the kids. I'll shoot anything!

The studio is located at 600 Madison Street in Old Town Alexandria (22314), coveniently above the Royal Restaurant. Look for the black door on the side of the building.

Thanks in advance for helping out.


Matt

p.s. We're not big enough to have sponsors, but I do want to thank some folks for their kindness:

Sam at Alpha Fotoworks, our lab in California, who has generously donated printing services. Michelle and Jeff at Lexar Media, for sending extra memory cards. Anne Bell, my old friend from way back in the UPI days, for helping with guest books and food. To Jodi Macklin, whose donation check came the day after I posted about Photo Marathon last week, setting a record for generosity. To our parents, Jay and Marlene Mendelsohn and Joan Vastardis and Dudley New for their geneorus contributions. And the usual suspects, who always stand ready to help, year after year: Laura Gonzalez, Julie Newell, Bill Auth, Dan Boston, Melissa Bonier, Tony Fletcher, Kate Karafotas. And most of all, to my wife, Maya, who not only helps with all of the processing for Photo Marathon but puts up with me during these crazy times.

On Alkyonis Street

My wife Maya grew up in a neighborhood in Athens called Palio Faliro. The street she lived on was Alkyonis Street. I know that because we happen to have a street sign that reads Alkyonis hanging over our back patio. Maya always told me that the day she and her mom moved from Greece back to America, there was a storm
that blew the sign over and they kept it as a souvenir. I have another theory of how the street sign came into their possession, but why quibble, especially when your mother-in-law is involved. I love that little sign, if for nothing else than it gives me a chance to see if my grasp of the Greek alphabet has improved any over the past ten years. (Answer: not so much.)

I mention this street sign because, in my world of serendipity and kismet, it came into play at last week's wedding of Mario Kontomerkos and Helise Owens. Mario and Helise were married at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church in Washington, one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the region. If you ever attend a wedding there and don't have the fortune of speaking Greek, don't worry. You can pass the time staring at the amazing ceiling above. I've done it myself.

I met Mario's parents in his hotel room before the wedding and they told me that they lived in Athens.

Oh, I said, my wife grew up there. In Palio Faliro.

Palio Falio? Mrs. Kontomerkos asked. That's where I'm from!

I desperately racked my brain to remember the name of the street Maya lived on but I was drawing a blank. The street sign, I thought! It's on the street sign in our backyard! But to avail. I'll call her later and find out, I promised the Kontomerkos clan.

Later that evening, during the cocktail hour, I quickly phone Maya and asked her about that street in Athens. "Alkyonis," she replied. I quickly found Mrs. Kontomerkos and told her and she said, "It's the next street over from mine! The very next street!"

Years ago I would have marveled at the small-world-ness of this. But this stuff happens to me all the time. (Remember, someone once came up to me in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert during the Gulf War to ask me if I went to SUNY-Binghamton.) So with each new encounter of chance, I am less and less surprised and more and more amused.

****

Helise and Mario had one of the most gorgeous late summer/early fall weather days of the year for their wedding. They also had, through kismet, one of the kindest clergymen I can remember to marry them. A conflict had arisen for the family priest in Connecticut and Rev. Steve stepped in. Without getting into details which might be considered "inside baseball"--too behind the scenes--let's just say that St. Sophia is not known for being particularly accommodating to photographers. But Rev. Steve was so kind, so polite, so accommodating I almost felt guilty about the wonderful access he was providing me.

Later in the evening, at the reception, I thanked Rev. Steve for his approach.

"Brother, we all have a vocation. I have a vocation, you have a vocation. The fact of the matter is that because I trusted you, I didn't notice you the entire service."

I'm not the most religious guy on the block, but I say amen to that.

****

Well, as Helise and Mario soak up the sun in Fiji right now, I've got some quick housekeeping stuff to take care of. First off, and most importantly, our Photo Marathon is only a week and half away. It will take place on Sunday, September 30 at the Old Town Alexandria studio. I sent out a massive email letter yesterday, but I'm so unscientific that it mostly went to anyone who happened to be in my inbox. So I'll repeat it here for those of you who need more info. Anyone who can't make it to Old Town on the Sunday can still make a donation. Please read below for info:

Dearest friends:

It's that time of year again! We're going to be staging yet another installment of Photo Marathon, our annual day of photographic giving, at the Old Town studio on Sunday, September 30. I'll be taking portraits from 9:00 in the morning until 7:00 in the evening without a break. (Not as impressive as Houdini dangling from a high-rise, I know.) And as always, every cent we raise will go to a worthy cause. This year we've designated the college funds for the children of two soldiers killed in Iraq.

Here's how it works and here's how you can help:


Photo Marathon began a few years back with the death of Michael Kelly, a journalist, in Iraq. I know Michael's sister Katy dearly and was at a loss as to how to comfort her. Without much thought, I decided to hold a photo fundraising event for Michael's two young boys, Tom and Jack. People responded -- as they always do in times of need -- and we raised $14,000 in one day of portrait shooting. Subsequent fundraisers went towards MS and tsunami relief.

This year we're going to be helping four young children:

In addition to his regular duties, Capt. Brian Freeman spent the last months of his life trying to obtain a visa for a young Iraqi boy who desperately needed heart surgery in America. The day that visa came through, Capt. Freeman was kidnapped and executed. He leaves behind a wife, Charlotte, and two children, Gunnar, 3, and Ingrid, 14 months. Similarly, Capt. Christopher Petty was en route to a school renovation project in January, 2006 when his convoy was attacked. Capt. Petty leaves behind his wife, Deb, and two wonderful boys, Owen and Oliver, all whom I've had the pleasure of meeting and photographing. You can read more about Capt. Freeman and Capt. Petty in a previous post, where I've also included external links about these two brave men.

We're going to salute Capt. Freeman and Capt. Petty's commitment to children in faraway lands by helping their own children right here at home. One can only guess at what a college education might cost in 15 years. So let's ensure that Owen and Oliver and Ingrid and Gunnar have no worries when those college days roll around. Here's how you can help:

If you can make it to Old Town on Sunday, September 30, drop by the studio. It's at 600 Madison Street in Alexandria, Virginia 22314, literally on top of the Royal restaurant. Look for the black side door. Starting at 9:00 I'll be shooting portraits as fast as I can. Leave the ties and sport coats at home--these will be relaxed portraits. In the past I've shot people and their dogs, children, mothers and daughters, etc. Anything goes, though I do ask you all to keep the number of people in a single image to no more than four. (This is not a hard and fast rule. We'll accommodate everyone.)

In order to take part in Photo Marathon you'll need to make a donation of $250 (more is great!) to the college funds of the Freeman and Petty children. We'll have people on hand to tell you which fund to make the check out to. (We're going be very unscientific and just alternate.) There are no time slots needed--just show up and have a good time. We'll provided coffee and snacks. I'll shoot a cool portrait and you'll receive a beautiful signed and dated 11 x 14 print. See? Easy as pie. (The fine print: This is charity event, not a substitute for a one-on-one portrait session with me. We're going to go as fast as we need to. And you'll get a cool, funky portrait, so I probably wouldn't come thinking you'll knock off your Christmas card photo!)

If you can't make it to Old Town on the 30th you can still help. Please mail a check made payable to either the Brian Freeman Memorial Fund or the Oliver and Owen Petty College Fund and send it to:

Matt Mendelsohn
3823 N. Chesterbrook Road
Arlington, Virginia 22207

If you're making a donation but not attending, any amount is acceptable and greatly appreciated.

I hope to see you in Old Town on the 30th! And one last request: We don't spent a cent on advertising on Photo Marathon. It's all word of mouth. So please forward this message to anyone you know has a big heart.



Thanks as always,

Matt

Where have all the daytime weddings gone?

To say that the daytime wedding is an endangered species is probably an understatement. In fact, I could probably count the number of daytime events I've photographed in the last couple of years on one hand.

Why is that?

Last weekend I had the pleasure of photographing a beautiful wedding on a beautiful day at a beautiful Georgetown estate. The bride and groom, Patricia and Miguel, came to me many months ago very excited about the prospect of throwing—as they said over and over—an "elegant garden party." They didn't want 19 page itineraries or assembly line photo sessions. They wanted an event where children could have fun, where the food was excellent, and where guests could linger under the trees and laugh. And specifically, they wanted the wedding reception to take place during the afternoon. They say beware of what you wish for, but that isn't the case here. Patricia and Miguel got exactly what they wanted: an elegant garden party.

I get really excited when people tell me they're getting married during the day. After all, weddings used to be daytime events. Perhaps I'm being too much of an Anglophile here, but when I think of weddings, I still conjure up some British affair, with the men all looking sharp in morning coats. (Or maybe I've just seen Four Weddings and a Funeral too many times on cable.)

Royal British weddings have always been daytime extravaganzas, the better, I guess, to see the pomp and circumstance. Even on American soil, the most regal and celebrated weddings usually take place during the day. I tend to think of the great Kennedy weddings in Hyannisport (Miguel is probably biting his lip about now)--that famous Harry Benson photo of Caroline Kennedy on her wedding day, the rolling Massachusetts hills and picket fences behind her. And if you think of all the silly celebrity weddings on the west coast, well, they have to be daytime events, lest the prying helicopters not be able to circle overhead. And if there are no circling helicopters, could you really call yourself an A-lister??

Certainly you don't need to be either British, a Kennedy or Tori Spelling to get married during the day. But it's no secret that the trend over the last few years has been in the other direction--towards evening affairs. There's nothing wrong with evening weddings, of course. I shoot them almost every week of the year. But as Patricia and Miguel proved last week, there's a lot to be said for dancing to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin on a beautiful late summer Georgetown day. It feels so, well, Georgetown-y.

In this case, the wedding was at Dumbarton House, a historic mansion on Q Street operated by the Society of Colonial Dames. Dating back to Thomas Jefferson's time, the house features an indoor museum and gorgeous manicured gardens--a truly perfect setting for a wedding.

For me, the wedding day began just a couple of feet away from Dumbarton House, at Patricia's apartment, where her hysterical bridesmaids kept the atmosphere fun and stress free. They are not a shy bunch, to say the least. It was then on to Holy Trinity, one of my favorite churches in the area because of it's easy photographic access (granted, not what most people look for in a church), and then over to the garden party. During cocktails I had a chance to say hello to my friends Chris and Caroline, whose daytime wedding at the Society of the Cincinnati I shot ten years ago, as well as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, as a huge opera buff, is a friend and admirer of my dear friend, the great mezzo soprano Denyce Graves. (You can read all about Denyce in the post below.) Each time I see Justice Ginsburg she always asks about Denyce's little daughter, Ella.

The entire day felt so relaxed, something I know that Patricia and Miguel had aspired to from the beginning. And as I looked around and saw everyone laughing uncontrollably during the toasts, the bright sunshine pouring down all around, I kind of felt sad that more people don't follow their lead.

Daytime. To quote George and Ira, 's wonderful.



Matt

Non piangere, Liu

Luciano Pavarotti was big in Sarajevo.

Not, perhaps, the first thing that should come to mind when thinking of one of the greatest voices in history on the day of his death, but then I happen, at this very moment, to be sitting next to my assistant, Djenno Bacvic, who hails from Bosnia. And as Djenno tells it, when the war in Bosnia was at its worst, and Sarajevo was cut off from the world, Pavarotti was always there, hosting "Pavarotti and Friends" concerts in his hometown of Modena, Italy; helping to jump start the relief agency War Child; and eventually joining up, years later, with Bono and U2 on the anthem Miss Sarajevo. "They really love him there" says Djenno, who now just told me he had goose bumps as I started playing the recording of U2's 1997 Sarajevo performance of that song, with Pavarotti piped in to the stadium.

You learn something every day, right?

I didn't know anything about Miss Sarajevo until tonight, but I certainly know a thing or two about opera. And it's not because one of our dearest friends is the world's most celebrated Carmen. I'll get to that in a minute. No, my love of opera, like many, started with Luciano Pavarotti.

When I started working at United Press International in 1988, I was first stuck on the overnight photo desk in Washington. In those pre-digital days, a photo editor would manage the network flow, part traffic cop, part Lily Tomlin switchboard operator. The photo desk had these wires and cables running in an out of it, like some bad prop from an Ed Wood movie, and we would talk into this ancient intercom and say things like, "Cranford, take the South. NXP, you're split for three. San Fran, come ahead." I know, gibberish to you guys, but there was a whole wire service lingo that you had to learn.

For many months I worked the overnight shift. After 3 a.m., when all the west coast papers were wrapping things up, I would look for ways to stay awake. One had to stay awake, like in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, because failure to do so might mean missing a news alert. (Like the night of the Exxon Valdez spill. Thank God the news feeds had these little alarm bells on them-- I was just starting to doze off and might have missed the whole thing.) The obvious way to stay awake was to watch television, with your feet propped up on the desk like you owned the joint. The problem, of course, was that there was nothing on at 4:00 a.m. in those days, just mostly static. Except, that is, for Sid and Nancy.

Sid and Nancy was a truly terrible movie about the life of Sid Vicious, starring Gary Oldman as the Sex Pisols bassist. For some bizarre reason, there was one channel on the UPI cable hookup that only played this movie, over and over and over. And over. It kept me awake, alright, but I used to get really excited when I could find anything else at that absurd hour. And that's how my love of opera began.

There was a commercial that would play during those overnight months, again and again, just like like Sid and Nancy, but far more pleasing on the ears. It was a a commercial for one of those Time-Life collections, Opera for Dummies, basically. At that point in my life I knew a lot about classical music--it's hard to avoid when one's last name is Mendelsohn--but little about opera. And each night, when this commercial would appear at three, four, five a.m., I would prick up my ears. The commercial featured Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma and I couldn't believe that a) something could be that beautiful; and b) that any composer could write himself, musically speaking, out of that kind of building climax. The orchestral release which follows Calaf's final "Vincero!" was fascinating to me, like the steam release on a boiling pot of water. I was hooked.

Almost twenty years later, it's funny admitting that it was Nessun Dorma that got me hooked--kind of like telling an art critic that Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party is your favorite painting. They're both beautiful, of course, if not a tad overexposed.

But it was the foot in the door. Nessun Dorma led me to the rest of Turandot, with it's haunting opening crowd scenes (O testa mozza!; O severed head!), not to mention the frantic conclusion of the great aria "Non piangere, Liu" (Don't cry, Liu), where father, prince and slave girl all sing on top of one another, pleading with Calaf not to bang the gong. It was Puccini's last opera--unfinished, technically speaking--but it was my first. I remember playing it to all my friends at the time, like Anne Dimmette (now Anne Bell), a fellow UPI colleague, pleading, "You have to read the words! You have to read the words!" She probably thought I was nuts.

Turandot led to La Boheme, La Boheme to Tosca, and Tosca to Verdi, Delibes, Bizet, Carlisle Floyd and Gershwin. I still want to cry every time I hear the climax of "O suave fanciulla," or when Porgy sings "Bess, you is my woman now," or when Tosca sings "vissi d'arte." And as a sign of just how much I've come from that first exposure to Pavarotti, my favorite opera these days is the John Adam's masterpiece "Nixon in China," an opera that always sends my wife Maya running for the doors. But title aside, it as musically complex and lyrically gorgeous as anything else I've heard. All these things I owe to Luciano Pavarotti and a Time-Life record commercial.

In a way, it even led to my dear friend, Denyce. I don't have to tell anyone that Denyce Graves is one of the greatest voices on the planet. And I'm proud to say that she is a good friend. A few years back she left a voice message at the studio, having seen my photographs of children at the Georgetown boutique Piccolo Piggies. Had all the things I've just described to you never happened, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about the deep voice on my answering machine. But it did all happen, and I remember thinking "the Denyce Graves??" We met and I took photos of her daughter, Ella, and a great friendship has ensued.

Once, while in Chicago to shoot Shawn Valassis and T.K. Gore's wedding, Denyce left me tickets at the Lyric Opera box office. My aunt Karen and I were mesmerized as she performed Carmen before a sold-out house. Another time, Denyce invited Maya and me to sit in Joseph Volpe's box at the Met and watch a matinee performance, while Alexandra and Ella played with the horses and costumes backstage. (Though perhaps not as cute as Ella and Alexandra sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower, their faces both covered in chocolate crepe.) Denyce makes a mean lasagna and she's one of the most generous and loving people I know.

So, all told, I guess I have a lot to thank Luciano Pavarotti for tonight: good friends, great music and fond memories of the overnight shift at 1400 Eye Street.



Matt

Say it ain't so, Joe

You might think there was something perversely quaint about an analog photo scandal just now coming to light, in the early years of the 21st century--the Golden Age of Photoshop, they'll call it someday--but if the burgeoning fiasco involving the late Joe O'Donnell reminds us of anything, it's that you don't need a fancy Apple laptop or a clone tool to cheat your way to infamy.

One of the main themes of Sunday's piece in the Washingon Post Magazine was my ambivalence about giving up a career in journalism for a lifetime of weddings. But even I could not have guessed at how quickly those two distinct parts of my life would come crashing back together, a direct result of my story, proving once again, in the words of Jonathan Safran Foer, that everything truly is illuminated.

Take a look:

Within hours after my Confessions of a Wedding Photographer piece was published, I began to receive scores of congratulatory email messages. Several, I noticed, were from former colleagues at United Press International, the legendary wire service where I began my career in earnest. I asked some of these old friends how they knew about my story and I was told that it had been linked on the Downhold list serve, an online community for Unipressers, as we affectionately call ourselves. (Think Marines. Once a Marine, always a Marine.) I immediately signed up, got my first daily digest, and within a mere few minutes of reading, was absorbed by a raging debate about photo plagiarism and forgery, a subject that I have written about many times.

For a brief second I thought to myself, don't get involved. After all, I had just renounced my journalism birthright, at least humorously, to the world--if not the greater Washington, D.C. metro area--in the Washington Post. But to quote Al Pacino, "Just when they thought I was out, they pull me back in." And so today we're going to talk about journalism, not weddings.

When photographer Joe O'Donnell died this past August at the age of 85, many newspapers, from his hometown Nashville Tennessean to The New York Times, printed glowing obituaries detailing his long and storied photographic career. As one of the the first photographers to document the horrors of Hirsohima and Nagasaki, as the man behind the iconic John-John salute, or on the scene in the Pacific with Douglas Macarthur, or even with FDR, Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference, O'Donnell was a journalistic Zelig, always in the right place and the right time.

The right place and time, that is, until John-John's salute was identified as the work of the great UPI photographer Stan Stearns, the Yalta Conference had morphed into the Tehran Conference, and even the Nagasaki and Hiroshima pictures fell into doubt. First documented at length by Marianne Fulton in The Digital Journalist, with a vital assist from the Unipresser group, which includes photo historian Gary Haynes and Annapolis native Stearns, O'Donnell's career is now being scrutinized with an electron microscope. (His first mistake was stealing from a UPI photographer. Fiercely proud, and for good reason, you don't want to mess with Unipressers. One of the other famous photos O'Donnell had claimed to have taken, that of Jackie, Bobby and Teddy Kennedy walking the funeral route, is also a legendary Stearns image.)

It appears that O'Donnell had been appropriating other photographer's images for years, re-cropping them, occasionally doctoring them, and then reselling them for profit on the Internet. It also seems as though O'Donnell was quite good at this. He would brazenly stamp the words "SAMPLE" over his images--images that he had stolen--to prevent others from resampling them. Chutzpah, as they say.

In his defense, O'Donnell's son has entered the fray, claiming his father was indeed a "White House photographer" for twenty years, and that he himself has the negatives from Hiroshima to back his dad's claims. In a letter to Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell, Tyge O'Donnell insists his father was not "leading the life of Walter Mitty," and that dementia may have played a part in his overreaching portfolio. It's all quite sad, actually, because O'Donnell is not here to defend himself, his widow is understandably confused by the furor, and his son appears to have some evidence that his father was in fact in famous places and around famous people. Just, perhaps, not the places and people in the images he and his gallery had been selling for years.

It's a story we've become quite accustomed to in journalism these past years--the unraveling of the journalist superstar, from Jayson Blair to Jack Kelley, from Brian Walski to, most recently, Allan Detrich. The first two, of course, were reporters who faked stories for The New York Times and USA Today, respectively; the latter, both accomplished photojournalists who tinkered with their photographs beyond any journalistic boundary. Walski was fired from the Los Angeles Times in 2003 after he "added" some extra drama to a photo of British soldiers standing watch over civilians in Basra. Detrich lost his job when years of "minor" photo doctoring was discovered. Apparently telephone polls and electrical wires were just too unsightly for his artistry--they simply had to go.

So what is it about these fudgers that made tampering with the truth so darn irresistible? It's clear that it's not a just a photography issue or, by the same token, just a writer's issue, as they all committed essentially the same acts: capital fraud and/or aggravated embellishment. And like baseball's Mark McGwire, or just about any one of 237 now-disgraced professional cyclists, each committed his deception while at the top of his game, not the bottom. Many of the guys tossed from the Tour de France were leading it, not losing it. It's not as if a cub reporter decided to fake out USA Today, or a entry-level photographer was sent to Iraq for the LA Times. No, in each case these were the stars, the cream of the crop.

I worked with Jack Kelley for many years, and like most folks at USA Today, liked him very much. His aw shucks Opie Taylor personality was instantly disarming. But I was also with Jack when he committed a bold and outright lie, a lie so big that I could only scratch my head in disbelief the next day.

Many years ago, I was with Jack on a cover story about the International Red Cross. The gist of the series was that newly uncovered documents showed that the Red Cross knew much more--and much earlier-- about Nazi concentration camps in World War II than they had ever admitted. As luck would have it, the head of the Red Cross was in from Switzerland that week, giving a talk at the National Press Club on an unrelated issue. We planned to "ambush" him after the talk to see if he might make a comment.

Hours earlier, in a coffee shop outside the shops at National Place, Jack and I chatted with the public relations officer of the Red Cross. His boss, the president of the organization wouldn't arrive for several more hours. Because of my family interest in the Holocaust, I asked him about the Red Cross and the plight of the Jews. He said something like, Look, it's not like we were the cavalry, riding in to the rescue. Good quote, I thought.

A few hours later, we waited for the Red Cross president's talk to end. As he entered an elevator, Jack asked him point blank about the concentration camps, as I tried to squeeze off a few frames. Clearly steamed, he responded with something like "Absolutely ridiculous," and the doors of the elevator closed. Imagine my surprise then, when the next day, high up in the story, the president of the International Red Cross was going on about--you guessed it--riding in like the cavalry.

Compared to Jack's later fabrications, this may seem like a minor incident, which is pretty much what Jack said, years later when confronted about it. But it shouldn't be dismissed so quickly. Jack's need to spice up an otherwise boring reaction -- "absolutely ridiculous" clearly didn't strike his fancy -- is key. The devil is in the details, and I believe that when the dust settles around Mr. O'Donnell's photographic plagiarism, there will be some evidence to show that he was in fact a photographer of some kind. And that he did travel to some of the places he claims to have. And that he even might have met some of the world leaders he claimed to have known. But these guys all get greedy. Some is never enough for them. They become addicted to the embellishment, always needing to improve the story just that much more. It's why Brian Walski changed his perfectly fine original photo and why Allan Detrich kept tinkering with backgrounds.

It remains to be seen whether O'Donnell's legacy can cling to any scrap of honesty at this point. Whether he truly was Zelig in the flesh, popping up in all the right historical moments, then addled by dementia in his later years, or simply a mediocre photographer with occasional access, sadly enhancing his fame through embellishment and outright thievery, will most certainly be revealed in the coming days. I wouldn't want to bet against the gang from UPI, that's for sure.

(The double irony, of course, is that Woody Allen's legendary film editor, Susan Morse, employed many of the same techniques seemingly favored by Joe O'Donnell--clever cropping and subtle alteration-- to create the opportunistic hero in Zelig. Unlike the digital magic employed by today's filmmakers, Morse used analog tricks more closely identified with the Cottingley Fairies episode of the early 1920's than Star Wars: Episode III. And to think I last wrote about the fairies back in 2005, when talking about a slew of other photo forgeries. It's a tangled web we weave.)

In the end, I return to cycling, the sport I loved to watch for so long, and the sport that is now being destroyed by the same many of the same ills plaguing journalism--cheating, deceit, artificial enhancement.

I'll leave it to Dave Stoller to say it best. Stoller, the wide-eyed hero of the 1979 classic Breaking Away, the greatest of all cycling movies--and one that all the Tour de France teams should be forced to watch in these doping days--is crestfallen when he realizes his idols, the famed Italian Cinzano cycling team, are as corrupt as everyone else.

"Everybody cheats, papa," he says, choking back tears. "I just didn't know it."



*********


A quick update at 10:31 am Wednesday:

Gay Haynes, writing on the UPI list, mentioned that he could swear that the Jackie O photo on O'Donnell's web site belonged to Jacques Lowe, her peronsal photographer. He was close. A quickie--and I mean quickie--Google search has the photo being shot by USIA photographer Mark Shaw. This is not an exhaustive search, but curious nonetheless.

Here's the O'Donnell site, where he goes on about shooting the picture.

And here's a link to a site showing the same Jackie image, though credited to Shaw.

Serendipity, Volume 347

I guess I would be ignoring the 600 pound elephant (Is it supposed to be an elephant or a gorilla? I have no idea if either one is 600 pounds) in the room if I failed to mention that I had a piece in the Washington Post today. I've received some of the nicest emails--most from total strangers, many from former brides and grooms--in the last twenty-four hours. I always like to think that I've had lots of cool experiences in my life as a photographer, but this is a new twist. Writing is something I've always loved to do, from the time I was a little kid and I would write silly parodies of Jim McKay telecasting from the Olympic Games, though I never really imagined I'd ever really get the chance to do it for a large audience.

(Don't get me wrong: The vast--and I mean vast--numbers of visitors to The Dark Slide each day are equally important but The Washington Post is, well, The Washington Post. Have any of you seen the hysterical new show on HBO called Flight of the Conchords? In it, the struggling duo from New Zealand have exactly one groupie, a loony woman named Mel.)

Anyway, many of you know that I am fascinated by moments of serendipity and chance, ever since someone approached me in the Saudi Arabian desert during the first Gulf War and said, "Did you go to SUNY-Binghamton?" Well, there have been several this week, some related to the Post story and some not, that I wanted to share this morning.

Serendipitous moment #1: This past week, I was trying to begin the process of forming a 501(c)3 organization in memory of my cousin Bronia, murdered more than sixty years ago. My brother Daniel's book The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million is fairly exhaustive in detailing our search for information into the deaths of the Jagers of Bolechow. But one single piece of information has come to us after the book's publication, thanks to a massive archive released by Russia, and that is that Bronia, a girl of twelve, was all alone when she was sent to a death camp. This haunting detail has convinced me of the need to set up some kind of organization to help children in need, in Bronia's name. No, I am not quitting my day job. But in 2008, when Photo Marathon rolls around, we will have our very own charitable trust, Bronia's Fund.

Of course, I know next to nothing about setting up a 501(c)3. You should have seen me the other day, making cold calls to lawyers and financial advisers, pretending to understand the differences between a foundation and a charity, as far as the IRS is concerned. I was getting really frustrated and really confused. Literally at the height of this confusion an email popped into my inbox. It was from Shannon Blevins, one of my favorite (read: happiest) brides of two years ago. She was saying hello, out of the blue. And as I got to the bottom of her email I read the following words: Shannon Blevins, C.P.A.

I called Shannon one minute later and said, "Shannon? What kind of work does your firm do?" She said, "Well, we work with a lot of non-profit and charitable trusts."

Serendipitous Moment #2: I've been getting a lot of emails regarding my Post piece. One particular note came from a fellow photographer in Arizona, Cameron Clark. She told me how much the story meant to her, in that it summed up her feelings about weddings and life and all.

I wanted to write her a thank you note and so I took a peek at her blog. Her first entry was an "8 Things You Don't Know About Me" post, exactly like my last post, and I laughed when I saw that she had been "tagged" by someone at LaCour Photography, the same folks who had tagged me. As I read her first two items about cycling, I immediately wrote her to tell her about my "8 Things" entry, which mentions how crazy I become during Tour de France month. We both share a love of cycling (though I haven't been riding in a long time) and I figured she'd appreciate the similarity. Then, after sending that email, I read the rest of the list and realized that not only do we both love cycling, but we were both in Alaska together in 2000 as part of the Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride. There weren't all that many folks on that snowy and frigid ride (it was August) and I can't believe how many times these things continue to happen to me.


Serendipitous Moment #3: Yesterday I shot the beautiful wedding of Miguel Estrada and Patricia McCabe at Dumbarton House, of which I'll post some images next week. Any of you living in D.C. know what the weather was like here yesterday--perhaps the most pleasant day of the summer. I always bump into lots of old friends at weddings these days and this was no exception. I saw Jocelyn Dyer and her husband Mike, whose children I photographed last fall. And I saw Matt McGill, whose wedding I photographed last October, and whose two-week-old baby, Calla, I just photographed last week.

The funny part comes from bumping into my friends Chris and Caroline Landau, though the serendipity lies not into seeing them yesterday at the wedding, but rather how we met in the first place.

Ten years ago, I was shooting a story for USA Today about, of all things, a resurgence in knitting clubs. So I went to one of these clubs, everyone hard at work knitting and perling, and started chatting with a woman who was talking about her upcoming wedding. I'm a born eavesdropper, what can I say? Well, I was getting married that year as well, and we started comparing notes.

Who's your caterer?

What's your venue?

Who's doing your flowers?

After going down the list I joked to Caroline that she should talk to my fiancee, Maya, and they should compare notes. Sometimes you say these things, but you don't really think they'll ever come to pass. Well, it not only came to pass and we've been great friends with Chris and Caroline ever since. Through dinner parties and Christmas cards and babies--even Chris's first oral argument in front of the Supreme Court of the United States--we've been friends. So the next time you're at your favorite knitting club, say hi to the person to your right. You might even get a sweater out of it.



Matt

Tagged :: 8 things you might not know about Matt

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, my friend Rachel LaCour in Atlanta "tagged" me with this internet chain. In the past, I've been accused of being exceedingly grumpy about these kind of reindeer games, but I've turned over a new leaf. As of this moment, I promise to be only marginally grumpy about these things. I will happily divulge eight things you probably don't know about me, though some have been cryptically listed on this very blog for a year now. But for the record, anyone who sends me an internet chain letter, an urban myth that has not been Snopes-tested, or a request to deposit money into a bank account in Congo on behalf of "my relatives, the Mendelsohns of Congo, who died tragically in a car accident outside the petroleum factory they owned" will be ignored as usual.

So here goes, 8 things you didn't know about me:

1) I have never, ever, ever had a cup of coffee in my life. Don't ask. I hated the taste when I was a kid and it never changed. In fact, I can remember my Nanny Kaye, in her little apartment in Miami Beach, circa 1970, giving me a cup of coffee ice cream and me desperately trying to get my brother Eric to eat it. Eric would end up with this duty more often than he probably bargained for-- the time in Shelburne Falls, Mass., when I dumped an entire plate of moussaka into his napkin at a dinner party comes to mind. (And that was long before I would end up marrying a Greek woman.)

2) I am not the world's greatest flyer (an ample understatement), but in in my life have done the following:

a) Twice jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. One was a static line jump from 3,000 feet in college. The whole floor of my dorm did it. I wasn't really thinking; The second time was a tandem free-fall from 10,000 feet above the Mojave Desert. A colleague from work asked me if I wanted to go. I wasn't really thinking.

b) Lay flat on my stomach in the refueling pod of a KC135 tanker looking straight down 27,000 feet. See the "21 in 21" section of the new website for more details.

c) Done loop-d-loops in an open-cockpit biplane piloted by bestselling military thriller author Stephen Coonts (Flight of the Intruder). I was shooting him for USA Today and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. I remember having this headset on, through which all I could hear was the sound of static mixed in with a lot of wind. At one point I heard the following:

"Kercrrr kerrrrc chrrrr chrrr-upside-krchr chhrrrr kkrrrttssks?"

I didn't have a chance to decipher any of it before we were completely inverted. Good time, actually.

3) Having grown up on Long Island, and having been properly groomed by my grandfather, I still have a soft spot for egg creams (curiously, there's no egg involved), Mallomars (greatest Nabisco product of all time) and black and white cookies. (Remember, it's a cake cookie; if it's hard as a rock it can't be called a black and white cookie.) I know never to get a shake when one can have a malt instead. And after every wedding, even at 2:00 a.m., I drink a YooHoo, stemming from some perverse good luck ritual.

4) The most embarrassing detail of my childhood--one that still gives me goose bumps--is that in Miss Grywin's 5th grade class at Central Park Road School in Plainview, New York, when all the kids dressed up for the day as their favorite great American (Honest Abe, astronauts, Mickey Mantle), I chose Walt Disney. So there I was with a suit and tie and a fake mustache that looked more der Führer than Uncle Walt. Here come the goose bumps.

5) My favorite movies are:

•Local Hero
•The Red/White/Blue trilogy of Krzysztof Kieslowski
•Breaking Away
•Love and Death
•The Great Escape
•Waiting for Guffman and/or Best in Show.

6) I went to see Star Wars with David Fischer at the Hicksville movie theater the week it came out in 1977. I thought it was okay, I guess, but I've never had a desire to see any of the 97 sequels and prequels since. In fact, each time I catch even a snippet of Natalie Portman walking with Hayden Christensen, both uttering some of the most awful movie dialog of all time, I'm convinced that George Lucas is actually a non-human life form.

7) Every year when July rolls around I turn into a Tour de France junkie, watching each day's telecast at least three times. First comes the live broadcast, followed by the re-broadcast, followed by the evening wrap-up show and re-broadcast. This year, with so many terrible doping scandals, I was convinced that I wouldn't care as much. I didn't miss a day.

8) My uncle Allan gave me my first camera, an Olympus OM-1. I was 13 or so at the time and the fuse was lit. The photograph that put me on the path to where I am now is this one: A man is arrested in the parking lot of a Binghamton, New York supermarket, moments after spray painting anti-war graffiti all over a decommissioned F-15 fighter jet. (The plane was being used as a recruiting tool for the Air Force.) No one from the Binghamton Press was there and I sold my very first image.

Okay, done. Let's see if my old friend Paul Gero will play next. You're it, Paul.

Matt

Tell it to the Marines

In my "former" life I spent a lot of time with members of the military, from being part of the first embedded combat pool during the invasion of Panama to the two months I spent in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the Gulf War. I've flown cross-country with a squadron of stealth fighters (I was in a KC 135 tanker) and hung out of helicopters as they chased camels across the barren desert. Needless to say, I have great respect for these men and women. In fact, this year's Photo Marathon will benefit two families who lost husbands and fathers in the current war in Iraq.

It's always great fun photographing military weddings and last Saturday didn't disappoint. Christine Vanderbeek, who can't speak more than seven words without laughing about something, married Nick Weber, who hails from the largest family I've ever run across, in a wonderfully joyous ceremony at the chapel on Fort Belvoir. (Let's cut to the chase: Nick has 15 brothers and sisters, the youngest of whom are so adorable and funny that I found it hard not to photograph them.)

As always, I could tell we were in for a fun day by the relaxed atmosphere at the Vanderbeek family home in Fairfax Station. Christine had her hair done with her dog at her side. Her dad was watching Clint Eastwood get one of the all-time great movie shaves in "High Plains Drifter." No chaos, no stress, only laughter. And as we walked outside to leave for the church, I looked around for the requisite limo or town car. Par for the course, Christine instead hopped into her dad's Jeep Wrangler and off they went, laughing down the drive.

Nick's family is much the same. On Friday night before the wedding, I met them all over at the Marine Barracks at 8th and I in Washington, the oldest post in the Corps, to watch Nick march in the evening parade. Established in 1801, the barracks has been the home of every commandant of the Marine Corps. In fact, the commandant's home was mysteriously spared by the British during the war of 1812, despite the fact that much of Washington burned around it.

Now, much of the evening parade at the post is performed long after sunset. And even though there are spotlights, trying to pick one Marine from a few hundred other Marines in the dark is not exactly a piece of cake. Luckily I had Nick's siblings to help out.

"Third from the left, back row!"whispered little Theresa.

"No, the other back row!"said little Tony.

"Definitely last guy, last row, by the bushes," came a third response.

Easy.

(And believe it or not, I nailed the picture as he marched by. I actually surprised even myself.)

I always thought I came from a large family, having four siblings. But 16? Wow. And Nick told me he couldn't ever remember a single fight between any of them. (OK, I just made that last sentence up.)

******

Okay, gang, I'm going to wrap this up. I've got a couple of more make-up posts to work on. As I said earlier, the new site is up and running, albeit a tad slowly--we hope to iron that out shortly--and there's a lot of cool stuff to look at there. I also just realized that we never had a proper coming out party for our new logo, which we've been using for the last few months. I'll make an official roll-out shortly.

And lastly, my friend Rachel LaCour just "tagged" me with this "8 Things You Didn't Know About Me" game. I am going to resist the initial urge to be grumpy, as I normally do with chain letters and the like, and will be a good sport. I really enjoyed reading Rachel's answers to the same question, particularly her final response about hand-written letters, and I will post mine shortly.

See ya,


Matt

p.s. As always, double click on all the images for better viewing.

Playing catch up

As usual, I'm running a bit behind on the bogging front, so I had better get my act together. There are a lot of things happening around here, from weddings to web sites (basically, from w to w), so here goes.

Two weekends ago I had the privilege of photographing the wedding of Rochelle Ochs and John Adams (no, not that John Adams) on the Chesapeake Bay. There's always a little bit of added incentive when a bride or groom come from an artistic background, and with John and Rochelle it was doubly the case. John is an accomplished painter whose work has been exhibited in galleries around the northeast. His work is very complex and you can view it here. I'll let John's artist's statement speak for itself:

"The repetitive meditative action is reflected in the work. Tension between the atmospheric random marks and the regulated rhythm of horizontal lines creates a visual vibration, which resonates endlessly (confined to the object none the less). In other paintings, the structural lines take the form of a drip, forming a counterpoint for the chaotic mark making. Juxtaposing a textural, physical paint surface with a slick, subtle panel may also form tension which draws the viewer in. Sometimes radio code and call numbers (from HAM radio magazines from the mid twentieth century) form a layer of atmosphere, teetering between abstract mark and letter or numeral."

I'm glad I let him say that!

Rochelle spends her days as I do--looking at pictures for a living. She's a photo editor at AOL, where several of my old USA Today buddies work. People will sometimes ask if there's more pressure shooting the wedding of a photography professional. I honestly find that it's less pressure thing than a simple desire to please someone who appreciates good photography.

(Truth be told, there was one funny moment that perhaps only a photo editor bride would have appreciated: during their ceremony, the sun began to set, leaving Rochelle in full golden light and John, two feet away, in utter shade. This is a frequent occurrence at outdoor ceremonies, where a bride and groom are facing each other. Someone has to be in the light, right? As the officiant asked people to greet their neighbors, and commotion ensued, I motioned to Rochelle to move her position a foot to the right. I figured if any bride would have understood, she would.)

Rochelle and John had a glorious summer day for their event. Their ceremony was all of ten feet from the Chesapeake. Afterwards we found some glistening wheat grass and made some nice family pictures. Rochelle's dad was beaming as he watched for a nearby bench. He's a wonderful man.

Given that we were practically on top of the water, I asked one of the ladies from the reception venue if there was away to get down to the beach. She looked at me like I was from Mars, though the question still doesn't strike me as odd, given where we were. Ah, liability concerns, 'ya gotta love 'em. Without skipping a beat, and to the apparent horror of said reception lady, I yelled to some folks on the neighboring property and asked if we could come over and take some pics. "Sure can!" came the welcoming response. And so we all traipsed on over, Rochelle in heels, maneuvering past the endless rows of stacked crab pots, down the rickety dock that extended over the water. Those folks were so sweet, constantly asking us if we wanted a beer. It never hurts to ask, right?


Matt

p.s. The web site is back in action: www.mattmendelsohn.com. There are some issues with loading times on some of the galleries, particularly the image-heavy wedding section. We hope to get these loading times corrected next week. But everything else is fully functional.

Save the Date for Photo Marathon '07

Okay, gang, mark those calendars: Photo Marathon '07 will take place on Sunday, September 30 in Old Town Alexandria.

Photo Marathon is our annual event of giving, something we started a few years back with the death of Michael Kelly in Iraq, a great journalist and brother of a dear friend. We raised almost $14,000 for the college funds of Michael's two young sons that first year, in one very long day of shooting portraits. Subsequent fundraisers for Tsunami victims and multiple sclerosis raised another combined $20,000. Now it's time to step up again and do some good.

Regular readers of The Dark Slide will remember that I had little trouble finding a worthy beneficiary for this year's event. Early this year, Capt. Brian Freeman, 31, of Temecula, California, was killed in Iraq, leaving a wife, Charlotte, a 14-month-old daughter and a 2-year-old son. What made Capt. Freeman's death leap off the pages of a long profile in the Washington Post this past January was not that he was courageous officer, of that he had graduated from West Point, or even that he used to race bobsleds and skeletons.

No, what made Brian Freeman's life exceptional was his heart. For the last six months of his life, Capt. Freeman, in addition to his regular duties in Iraq, worked tirelessly to obtain a visa for a sick 11-year-old Iraqi boy in desperate need of heart surgery in the United States. Just as the visa he had worked so hard to secure was approved, Capt. Freeman was kidnapped and executed.

I invite all of you to read the emotional piece about Capt. Freeman here in the Washington Post, as well as this follow up story about Charlotte Freeman meeting the boy after his successful surgery in New York.

But there's more to the story.

A few months back, when I originally posted about our intent to help Capt. Freeman's family with our next, then-unscheduled Photo Marathon, the first person to chime in with an offer to help was one of my former brides, Julie Newell. I wasn't surprised.

Julie is my only bonafide blog groupie. I can always count on her to say "great post," or to make some sarcastic comment, or to direct me to the latest in terrible wedding trends (brides underwater was the last one) and even more terrible wedding photography. It was Julie who first alerted me, several years ago, to the phrase "Bridal Industrial Complex," a moniker that always makes me smile. And on top of this, Julie had a fantastic wedding, to Nathan Leslie, one that I continue to mine for pictures for various slide shows, websites, etc.

Anyway, a few months ago Julie asked if I would do an early shoot for this year's Photo Marathon, for a friend of a friend. She said she knew we hadn't scheduled anything for certain yet, but this friend's husband had been killed in Iraq and she was coming to town for the renaming ceremony of a United States Post Office in his name. I was happy to oblige and that's when I got a chance to meet Deb Petty and her adorable sons, Oliver and Owen.

Like Capt. Freeman, Capt. Christopher Petty was also killed in January, a year earlier in 2006, when a roadside bomb exploded. Moreover, just like Brian Freeman, Christopher Petty was involved in a humanitarian effort at the time of his death; he was en route to check on the progress of a school rebuilding project when his convoy was ambushed. You can read all about Christopher Petty here, on his Arlington National Cemetery memorial website.

It was a pleasure to accommodate Deb and her boys at the studio a couple of months ago. That's Oliver up top, very cute and very patriotic. And as I've said many times before, never mess with the karma. And so I'm happy to report that the Petty boys' college fund will be a co-beneficiary of this year's Photo Marathon.

Two good men, and four little children who will be lucky to count on your support.

I know that within an hour or two of posting this, I will receive an email from Julie Newell asking how she can help. It's the best part of my job--all of my brides and grooms turn into great friends.

Once we figure out the logistics for the funds, I'll post some info here. In general, the Photo Marathon on 9/30 will operate just like in the past: Everyone coming to the studio will make at least a $250 contribution. In return, I'll shoot a cool portrait. This is speed photography at work, all for a good cause. In past years we've had kids, dogs, families, you name it (see above). We've used vintage cameras, old Polaroid film, whatever. We'll figure it out. You won't get an hour with me--more like seven minutes--but remember, the main thrust on this day is giving, not getting.

Save the date!

Matt

Cherry Blossom Redux

A lot of couples and families ask me to shoot portraits during the springtime Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington. Having done this for years and years, I can tell you that it's one of the few overly-hyped tourist attractions to actually exceed expectations. The trees are so heavy with their delicate pink and white blossoms that one simply feels overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.

The logistics of getting to and from the Tidal Basin are another story. After 20 years I've learned that the only time one can successfully navigate the throngs of people--and dirth of parking spaces--is to be there at sunrise and out not much later.

This past spring I shot several couples down among the cherry trees whose weddings were in the distant future. And because of early blooming this year, I had to stack several appointments virtually on top of each other. The blossoms don't exactly wait for your schedule to mesh, and so it's important for all involved to very flexible.

As it happened, I ended up shooting two couples side by side one very early morning. Literally. Not wanting to wasted the golden sunrise, I would shoot one couple for a few minutes and then quickly "swap in" the other couple. It seemed crazy but we all laughed and the pictures were beautiful.

Part of the fun of that morning was that both couples had time to chat about their respective weddings, in between spurts of Matt yelling "Quick, quick! The light is Amazing!" and it quickly dawned on all of us that their dates were actually a day apart. Paul and Deena were getting married at the Museum of Women in the Arts on Sunday, July 15 and Julie and Chris a day earlier at Woodend.

I thought about that fun cherry blossom morning last week as I photographed Deena and Paul and Julie and Chris's wedding, back to back. Though completely different--Deena and Paul's affair was decidely Egyptian in flavor, with a belly dancer leading a procession of guests and fezzes for the men, while Julie and Chris had a gorgeous day to stroll around the grounds of the Audobon Society and eat crabcakes--both weddings, as I've now come to expect, were ultimatley shaped by high levels of romance and low levels of stress.

It seems so simple, doesn't it? High levels of romance and low levels of stress. Needless to say, of course, it's not a recipe that is always followed at weddings. At their core weddings are a celebration of the love that two people share. Why anyone would want to clutter that up with overly-ambitious timetables, family in-fighting and other miscellaneous tension ("I can't believe so-and-so was ten minutes late to the hair appointment!"), I don't know.

Julie and Chris and Deena and Paul got it, that's for sure. Their weddings were perfect celebrations, each one a reflection of their own families and values. We all laughed as one of Paul's colleagues at the IMF talked about his obsessive love of Wagner. (I'm a huge opera lover, though Wagner has admittedly been a struggle for me. I'll stick with Vissi d'arte from Tosca.) Apparently Paul will travel anywhere in the world for a good Ring cycle, and everyone wished Deena good luck trying to keep up. At Chris and Julie's wedding at Woodend, little flower girls giggled as they played hide and seek among the huge and ancient trees. Julie was so calm the morning of her wedding that she was eager to listen to my advice about the south of France, where she's now honeymooning. Other brides might have been too stressed out to be able to focus on the splendor of Aix en Provence.

Anyway, I have to go pack my gear for a quick trip to New Orleans tomorrow for a corporate shoot about smoke-free restaurants. New Orleans is a great city, but it's no fun by yourself for one day. I'd much rather be with Julie and Chris, as they explore Les Baux de Provence or sit at one of the trillion cafes in Aix, or with Deena and Paul, as they go from Tokyo to Bali and more.

Not sure if you can get good Wagner in Bali.

Cheers,

Matt

p.s. Don't forget: for a good laugh, click on the sound file in the post below for a Grammy winning Springsteen duet. It might take ten seconds to laod, as it's a big file. An as always, double-click photos for better viewing.

Alexandra Springsteen

thunderroadfinal.mp3


I'm going to try and write something later tonight about the two great weddings I shot last week. But in the meantime, I finally opened Apple's GarageBand tonight, software that's been wasting away on my computer for years and years. So with a brand new microphone I bought at the Apple Store, I give you Alexandra Springsteen and the E Street Band.

Be back shortly.

Matt