Cartier-Bresson and Me: Part 6
Re: The Christian Science Monitor
The fiasco with failing utterly to publish my piece on Pavel Zajicek and The Plastic People and similar experiences convinced me that neither the timeliness of a story, nor the quality of my writing and photography mattered in finding opportunities to publish my journalism. Even when I succeeded the economics were not in my favor. Yet in 1980 I had a streak of good luck with The Christian Science Monitor, one of just a few truly national U.S. newspapers in those days. The foreign news editor ran my story about the “Alice In Wonderland” quality of the Polish economy on the front page. This sudden break came in the immediate wake of Solidarity’s strikes in Gdansk. The Monitor published others of my Polish pieces and for once I was given a forum for my journalism. One day an entire ad-free page was devoted to my writing and photography. It showed the Writer’s Union café, where sat leading dissident Adam Michnik, a key member of Solidarity. I was thrilled to see my work in a major news organ, reporting an important story, illustrated with photos in the manner of Cartier-Bresson. There was a downside: Being an independent journalist I was paid “stringer’s rates” for my work: $400 total for the entire page. That sum did not even pay my travel expenses in doing the piece.
Throughout the years of working mostly in the shadows I remained a devoted acolyte of Henri Cartier-Bresson. I bought every book that featured his work. Inspired by seeing some of his photos printed as big as 30”x45” in a Manhattan gallery, I learned how to print my own giant images, projecting the negative onto oversized sheets of photo paper cut from a 100-foot roll and fastened down on my darkroom floor with the enlarger head raised two meters above. 45-minute exposures were not uncommon.
For a period of years I lived out this ideal: citizen of the world, camera in hand, ever ready for the next opportunity when the prospect of a great image might present itself. I was never without my camera, usually the Leica M-2, always looking out for that great composition.
Even more frustrating than pursuing magazine and newspapers editors was my unsuccessful quest to exhibit in galleries. One big exception was my 1-man exhibit in the gallery of ZPAV, The Union of Polish Art Photographers, in Krakow, Poland. I hung over 100 photos in the expansive gallery. Further, I arranged with the cultural attache in the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw to take the exhibition on the road after its conclusion in Krakow. Two years later the prints were returned to me at home in the U.S. after exhibitions in 6 cities of Poland.
Failing to establish a reputation back home, lacking a sponsor, and steadily loosing money it was inevitable that I would move on. Cartier-Bresson offered me an artistic vision and a model of how to live, but not a way to secure my place in the world of photography. I never lost my love of the master’s work or the ideal he represented. Eventually, years after I stopped actively photographing, I got my London exhibit (Proud Galleries, “Blues Anthology”, 2008-2009), and my show at Panopticon Gallery in Boston (April-May, 2010) in Boston, and an exhibit in the Cambridge office of Google.
[Go on to Part 7, Conclusion]