Photographing MOMA Photography Curator, Susan Kismaric

When photographer Barbara Leven called and asked me if I would photograph Susan Kismaric, the photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art, in conjunction with a conference PWP, (Professional Women Photographers), plans for March when Ms. Kismaric will be the keynote speaker, I was humbled, gratified and a little anxious. I would have felt a bit more intimidated and apprehensive about this assignment had I not taken this photograph of Lesley Martin, the editor of the prestigious publication, "Aperture" last year for the exhibition, “Faces of A Village”, in Long Island City.
My assistant, Alex Kotlik and I arrived at MOMA on a recent Tuesday morning when the museum is closed to the public. Having previously scouted the museum for the best places to shoot Susan, I knew that I wanted some photos at the Bauhaus Stairway. However, I felt compelled to start out in the iconic Sculpture Garden, even though the light was a bit contrasty. With Alex manipulating the reflector, we got a couple of good shots outside with Susan sitting in the open shade.

After we went inside, I recognized that I had an immediate problem. I had discovered, the day before, that my husband, who took my Canon D10 to shoot a project that he was working on in California, accidentally took the battery charger for my Nikon. I knew that I was low on battery juice, but I thought I would have enough power for the shoot, with my two batteries having half-lives. It turned out that one of the batteries actually had no life at all, and so I was left with one battery half full (or half empty, depending on how one looks at these things.) Having told Susan that I wouldn’t take up more than an hour shooting her, I squelched my apprehension and got on with the job at hand.

What a joy it was to walk through the galleries, with no one around, surrounded by some of the most fabulous works of art on the planet. Susan told me that it was one of the perks she most enjoyed while working at the museum. The light and background in the galleries was wonderful and Susan seemed pretty happy to be sitting and looking pretty, so before we moved on to the Bauhaus Steps, I got these in.

I knew I still had enough battery life to get a few in the Bauhaus Steps and and they turned out to be Susan’s, PWP’s, and my favorites. This is the one that Susan liked best, and PWP will be using this for publicity purposes.

Thinking it would be a good idea to just get a couple of shots in the Photography gallery, I managed to get off a few frames (that I did not use) just as my battery died. So, a couple of lessons learned: watch what your husband takes away with him, and don’t panic (which I didn’t!).

Photographing Rose Fazio, a 100 year old resident of Long Island City

In the fall of 2008, Diane Hendry, who ran a gallery called Art-O-Mat, in Long Island City, New York, asked me and another photographer, Alexander Richter, if we would photograph some of the residents of Long Island City for a show that would be on view from February to April in 2009. Diane was a long time resident of the area and she knew most of the people very well. She loved many of these people, and, as I began photographing them, I fell in love with them too.

This area of New York City is an amazing mix of teachers, artists, musicians, blue-collar workers, community activists and many others who spend a surprising amount of time with each other doing all kind of interesting things. Many of them live in humble but very interesting homes, some of them having lived there all their lives. Rose Fazio was one of these people. She lives in the house she was born into, one hundred years ago. I decided to photograph her in St. Mary’s church, a couple of blocks away from her home. I later found out that although her two daughters regularly attend St. Mary’s, Rose is less enthusiastic about church going. Nevertheless, she agreed to go with me there. When I picked her up, she was all dressed up for the occasion with her rhinestone earrings, her lipstick and her perfectly coiffed hair. We spent about an hour and a half in the church, walking around, finding the best places with the most flattering light, etc. She was very relaxed, and yet she had intensity in her clear blue eyes that I thought was amazing. She didn’t tire until the very end of the session and later on, when I showed her the photographs that I made of her, she seemed very pleased.

Prospect Park Peaks

Last Saturday I marched along with the Brooklyn Little Leaguers as they inaugurated the opening on the 2010 baseball season. Afterward, as I walked around Prospect Park, I thought, Today, right at this moment, it is peak season in the park. After this, we can look forward to the three h’s….hazy, hot and humid. But let’s not get carried away. Right now it is heavenly. All the fruit trees are in bloom, as are the magnolias, dogwoods, elms, redbuds, locusts, yellowwoods, sycamores, forsythia, and daffodils. I’m a tree hugger, I admit it, but tell, me, how can one not be in love with these magnificent specimens, and they’re right here, in our beautiful backyard. Thank you Tupper! We will miss you, but we’ll always have the promise of spring in Prospect Park.

"Ya Gotta Have A Blog"

There was a time, in the distant past, when all I needed was a camera and film. Then about a decade ago, I was told, “ya gotta have a digital camera”. Being a right-brained computer-intimidated person of a certain age, I resisted for as long as I could and then finally “went digital” and the flood gates have opened and all the “ya gotta haves” have rained down on me ever since. After I launched my website (another “ya gotta have” of course), I was told many times, “ya gotta have a blog” which fell on deaf ears. That is, until today, when I went to a workshop titled “Digital Social Marketing” and the guy who ran the workshop, Dorian Benkoil said, (well, you know what he said). Of course, I knew what he was going to say when I signed up for this because I had already capitulated in my mind. This is a digital age and I’d have to learn to live with it, and use it to the best of my ability. So here I am, armed to the teeth with all kinds of information that will take me decades to learn and understand. My not-so-secret weapons, of course, are my son and my husband, two very savvy guys who utilize both sides of their brains to great effect (albeit sometimes quite annoyingly) and who will be tickled pink to see this. If I play my cards right, they’ll help me get through the morass.

It has been said that I need to improve my SEO, or search engine optimization. Sounds fine, of course, (I love throwing those technical terms around even if I don’t know what I’m talking about….) and that’s what I want to have happen. All the neat things that I see my son and husband do when writing their blogs don’t come easily to me. But I must widen my network, bring people to my websites, and get on with the business at hand in order to increase my SEO and my business! Then, perhaps sometime, in the hopefully not-too-distance future, I can hear myself knowingly saying to someone, “Oh! You don’t have a blog? Ya gotta have a blog”!