Last week I photographed the funeral of David Wright. He had only recently retired. His Border Patrol comrades honored his passing with respectful ritual and caring. I wanted my viewers to connect with the solemnity and respect at that event. Like it was in those old magazine images, there was a story to tell.
On Christmas day, I had the privilege of shooting Ken's family that has grown since he married Judy. It was a rare time when everyone was there. That circumstance demanded documentation and could tell a story.
Two major shots mattered: one of Ken and Judy and everybody else and one with only the grandparents and grandchildren. Those two experiences created mental and physical memories for all of us. It was events like these that sometimes ended up on the pages of Life.
Framing grandparents and grandchildren together is a challenge. Parents try to get their children into some kind of position (not pose) that won't embarrass them in the final print. It works or it doesn't. The attempt is sometimes more photogenic anyway, but you really cannot shoot those struggles. It would not be nice.
It was the "everybody" shots that brought back memories of those old magazines. There are pockets of where visual storytelling is taking place. Other groups look like something out of a Norman Rockwell cover for the Saturday Evening Post. His pictures, with their down home Americana and innocent whimsy, made me want to be an artist. The placement of some faces, interactions of bodies and individual expressions reflected what I saw in his paintings. They connected memories from fifty years ago to new ones that are only beginning to ferment in the mind.
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