Thursday, September 27, 2007

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.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

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

Sunday, September 09, 2007

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

Thursday, September 06, 2007

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

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

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.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

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