Blue

Careful readers of this little blog will have long ago noticed the little sidebar called "A Matt Primer" located on the right hand side of the page. I added the list when I first created The Dark Slide and I didn't think very hard about it at the time. But it's accurate. I am pretty much an Aimee Mann groupie and I did set a SUNY Binghamton record for failing Chaucer four times (hence the Canterbury Tales link) and I do worship the ground that New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast walks on.

But the first link, for Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski, really hits closest to home. Though he died too young Kieślowski remains my favorite director. His obsession with themes of fate and chance, as well as his keen attention to color in all his films is nothing short of remarkable. I remember being mesmerized by Irene Jacob in The Double Life of Veronique and even more enchanted by Juliette Binoche in Blue, the second installment of his Three Colors trilogy.

What the heck does this have to do with weddings, you ask? Well, I had to laugh this past weekend because my bride, Andrea Aten, bore more than a passing resemblance to a young Juliette Binoche. And just like a Kieślowski movie, my mind was drawing a blank all day. I knew Andrea looked liked someone, I just couldn't think who! Finally, with my very last thought as I was leaving Raspberry Plain at the end of the night, it hit me.

And in hindsight, which is always perfect, I now realize that there were more Kieślowski connections on Saturday than I thought. On a day that weather forecasters predicted would be bleak, rainy and grim, we ended up with some of the best light and color I've seen.

So rather than yak about things, I'll just post some pictures from the wedding of Andrea Aten and Shaun Kennedy. You can see for yourselves. As always, click on the image for a bigger view.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!


Matt

p.s. No, the last image of the little girl is NOT set up! I was shooting Andrea and Shaun and little Avery just wandered into the frame carrying two bottles of Miller Lite. Now I can say I've seen it all.

Actually, it is Greek to me

Well, it was bound to happen. After ten years of being married to a Greek woman, and nearly ten years shooting weddings, I finally shot my first Greek Orthodox wedding this past weekend. You would have thought that the odds would have dictated that I'd have photographed plenty of them by now. Nope, not one. Weird, eh?

And that's why I was really looking forward to the wedding of Maritsa Lohere and Robert Kondilas. I've always wanted to shoot inside of St. Sophia, the beautiful Greek Orthodox church in Washington. I've been to midnight Easter services there with my wife Maya, and have consumed way too many gyros at the St. Sophia Greek Festival (which seems to pop up every four weeks or so), but never had the opportunity to actually work inside the cathedral.

My Greek connection goes back to 1995, when I met my wife Maya while we were both working at USA Today. Maya grew up in Athens and spent her first ten years or so there. She rode the bus each day from her home in Palio Faliro to the American Community School in Halandri. (The actor Greg Kinnear was a couple of years ahead of her at ACS.) Maya's time in Greece coincided with, among other things, the military junta, the ongoing efforts to get US Naval bases out of the country, frequent bomb scares, and the murder of the CIA's Athens station chief. Pretty exciting stuff for a little kid!

I had never been to Greece before I met Maya but we've been several times since. We were engaged on the island of Santorini in 1996 and, more recently, our daughter Alexandra was baptized there in 2005. (It was at Agia Thomas, in Goudi, the same church Maya was baptized in decades earlier. In the photo she's being held by her godmother.) Greece is such a wonderful place. I'll always treasure the image of Alexandra, clutching a stuffed little piggie, exploring the Parthenon. Or seeing the great Argentine tenor Jose Cura sing under the stars in the Herod Atticus theater on the Acropolis.
And I can't leave out the tavernas that specialize in paidakia, grilled lamb chops. Here in crab country, we go to restaurants where they put some newspaper over a table and dump Maryland blue crabs on the table. In Greece, they do the same thing with paidakia.

All of which brings me back to Robert and Maritsa. I met them earlier this year. Maritsa, you see, is best friends with one of my favorite people, Annie Magruder. It's always fun to have that personal connection. And Robert and I bonded instantly--like me, he's a Tour de France nut. I remember that after our consultation we all went down to the Greek diner (you're detecting a pattern here?) that my studio sits on top of in Alexandria and talked about Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton.

Well, Maritsa and Robert had a beautiful wedding. I couldn't understand a thing, since the entire service was in Greek, but I got the gist. (There's a funny weekly feature in one of the English language newspapers in Athens called "Learn Greek in 28 years.") St. Sophia was as beautiful as I imagined. And for their reception, Robert and Maritsa chose one of the most beautiful rooms in all of Washington, the Crystal Room at the Willard Hotel.

Last week, as you'll remember, I photographed Shari Maletsky and Aragorn Smith's wedding ceremony in the Crystal Room. This time, it was the reception. There's really nothing like this turn of the century space, with spectacular period chandeliers. In fact, a photographer friend of mine recently told me that he once had a bride who got married in the Crystal Room and said that she hated the chandeliers. What a dope!!!



I guess I should wrap this up before I lose all of you. Maritsa and Robert are in Thailand and cambodia right now. Let's hope they read this blog and hook up with my old friend Narisara in Ankgor Wat. And I hope you don't mind me rambling on about all things Greek tonight.

Kalinihta!


Matt

p.s. I've always assumed people would figure this out, but just in case: you can see larger images by double-clicking on any of the photos in this blog.

A Willard wedding

The posts have gotten a bit on the ponderous side of late, so just a quickie post about last week's wedding of Shari Maletsky and Aragorn Smith at the Willard.

It seems like forever ago that I met with Aragorn and Shari at the studio. And sometimes when that much time goes by one forgets little details about the couple. Remember, I meet with most couples a year before their wedding. Most days I'm just lucky if I can remember where I left my keys. So in this case I forgot how laid back and fun these guys were. But by the time I started shooting Aragorn shaving in his room at the Willard, and saw that he had shaving cream on his nose and around his eyes, like some deranged elf, I remembered.

Shari and Aragorn were married in the hotel's Crystal ballroom, a magnificent turn-of-the-century space that truly takes one back through Washington history. (Remember, the term "lobbyist" comes from the Willard's famous foyer.)

Anyway, it was a beautiful affair, marked primarily by it's high level of joy and low level of stress.

A case in point (and Shari, forgive me for mentioning this!): At one point before the ceremony, we were taking some photographs outside in the patio area. Though we were outside for less that three minutes at that time, the bottom of Shari's dress got a little dirt spot on it. With 420 weddings of experience under my belt, I can safely say that a lot of brides would have had a meltdown. Shari didn't bat an eye. She was completely and utterly cool and collected. I was really impressed!!

I have to hurry up because I need to get back to--where else--the Willard for what promises to be another great wedding this afternoon. Today's ceremony is at St. Sophia, the fabulous Greek Orthodox cathedral off Mass. Ave. I'll keep you all posted!


Matt

Real heroes are even better

Four days ago I wrote about some of my idols--Charlie Chaplin, Dmitri Shostakovich and David Halberstam. We all have a personal stable of historical figures who we identify with and look up to.

But today I received an email that reminded me that sometimes are heroes can live right down the block. It came from Jodi Rush, the mother of Heather Sigmon, one of my brides from October, 2005. Jodi was writing to tell me that our mutual friend Frank Johnston, one of the great news photographers of all time, was recently honored with the White House News Photographers Association's Lifetime Achievement Award at WHNPA annual dinner this past weekend. (Once upon a time, I would have been at that dinner, but weddings have replaced photojournalism dinners as my weekend activity. C'est la vie.)

Frank was a guest at Heather's wedding to Jose Vargas back in the fall of '05, and I've bumped into him occasionally since then, almost always at the Apple Store in Clarendon. To say that he's is one of the greats doesn't really come close to giving him the respect he deserves. Frank was in Vietnam, he covered Watergate, he was in Dallas the day Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, he photographed the Jonestown massacre in Guyana. The list goes on and on and on. Three times he was named White House News Photographer of the year.

But as I'm sure he knows all too well, you can't really talk about Frank Johnston without talking first about Peace Church.

Back in 1967, while shooting for United Press International--where I would begin my career 25 years later--Frank found himself trapped inside a tiny Catholic church in An Hoa, South Vietnam. It was known simply as Peace Church. Needless to say, peace was nowhere to be found that day.

Quite simply, I believe--and I'm not alone--that Frank's photograph of the haggard and scared Marine looking up from inside of Peace Church, the large wooden crucifix of Jesus looming behind him, is the most haunting photograph to come out of the whole war. 72 dpi on a blog can't do this photograph justice.

Now, certainly there are other great photographs from Vietnam, most of which I don't even need to link to. They are fixed in our brains: Eddie Adams' Saigon execution, Nick Ut's tragic photo of a naked girl running down a street after being napalmed, and Catherine Leroy's image of a Marine realizing his buddy is dead are among the greatest news photographs ever captured. But Peace Church is different. For all the action of those three famous photographs, Peace Church is just so darned quiet.

As Phil McCombs would write in the Washington Post's amazing 1998 multi-part story about Frank and Peace Church, "It was a butcher shop in that church. In the fading light, the moans of wounded Marines mingled with the explosions of incoming mortar rounds. Men were dying in one another's arms. Bodies lay on the floor. Shrapnel sprayed the cement walls outside like handfuls of nails hurled by a giant. A few hundred yards away, Marine units struggled in mortal combat with North Vietnamese Army regulars. One 200-man company had 15 killed and 60 wounded in a few hours. Medevac choppers couldn't get in. Wounded and dead were taken to the church."

Everyone should read this series. There's little I can say that could supplant McCombs' prose. You'll read about the man who called Frank in 1998, believing himself to be the brother of the young Marine in the photo. You'll read about the bond the two men form, and of their emotional trip back to Vietnam together to retrace the steps of that young Marine, thought to have been killed not long after Frank made his picture. And then, like a foul ball from out of nowhere, you'll read about the man who, as fate would have it, would finally step forward, some 30 years after the photograph was taken, to say that he was in fact the Marine in Peace Church. I remember reading the Post series and feeling proud just to know I worked side by side with Frank. For someone who has recorded so much history he is a remarkably humble man--always smiling, always laughing.

In fact, when I photographed Frank and his wife Nancy dancing at Heather and Jose's wedding a few years back, he kept deflecting all of my admiration and praise for him, instead asking me questions about what I was doing in wedding photography and the like. A real life hero, for sure.

So let's all salute a true legend of photography, Frank Johnston, winner of the White House News Photographer Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. No one is more deserving than you, Frank!

Matt


(Peace Church by Frank Johnston, courtesy UPI/Corbis-Bettman)