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"I think about my father often these days, perhaps because he appears on so many of the contact sheets I am working with."
Inside Street Photography |
The official newsletter of Street Photography Magazine |
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| Friday, 27 Dec 2024 | Reading time: 10 mins | Read online
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When my cellphone rang at 3 AM, I expected bad news. I was right–it was someone from my father’s nursing home, calling to let me know that my father Anthony had just died. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I telephoned the director of Lockwood Funeral Home and arranged for them to collect my father’s body. I realized that my father died at 3 AM on December 26th, 2013, and I was born at 2 AM on December 26th, 1947. He and I shared life on this planet for 66 years and one hour.
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| Brooklyn, 1948 |
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My father was born in 1922. He was the son of Italian immigrants and grew up in a large family during the Great Depression. My brother and I were born shortly after World War II, during a time of prosperity in America. With such different beginnings, how could our relationship not have its ups and downs, especially during America’s turbulent 1960’s? Although street smart and great with numbers, my father did not finish grammar school and regretted his lack of a formal education. When I left Fordham University in 1968 after my junior year to become a VISTA Volunteer, Dad was puzzled and tried to change my mind. Eventually he accepted my decision and wished me luck. His airmailed packages of Italian meats and cheeses were a special treat for me and my fellow VISTA Volunteers in rural California.
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I returned to Brooklyn in 1970, completed my undergraduate degree in 1972 and earned a Master’s Degree from Brooklyn College in 1975. My decision to become a photographer disappointed my parents, especially my mother who had hoped that I would become a priest, or at least a lawyer. My father was more realistic. He asked a card-playing friend, Marty, whose family sold photo equipment, to ambush me with a verbal photo quiz. After I “aced” his questions about exposure and “f-stops”, Marty turned to my father and said “He’ll do OK.” And that was that. From then on my father was always supportive. He often lent me money for photo equipment, and was always a willing subject. One day he stood quietly in his apartment’s afternoon light while I bracketed exposures to test my new light meter.
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| My father, 40th Street, Brooklyn, 1978 |
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As I finished up, he looked directly at me and said “Sometimes, there’s nothing to say.”
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I think about my father often these days, perhaps because he appears on so many of the contact sheets I am working with. In 1977, I photographed him with my cousin Michael outside our summer bungalow in Rockland County.
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| Valley Cottage, New York, 1977 |
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A few years later I submitted this photo to a group exhibition at NYU’s Grey Gallery, and was pleased that it was chosen, and earned an “Honorable Mention”. My father mellowed over the years, becoming more accepting of the cultural changes of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. He never really “got” what photography meant to me, but he began to understand some of the subjects that interested me. He once suggested that I might want to photograph in “a small church on 4th Avenue and 24th Street.” He was right. I used the photograph of this building (It was not a church.) covered with signs expressing religious belief for the invitation to a photo exhibit at the Museum of Biblical Art in 2005. "The Twist" replaced the foxtrot as his favorite dance. He enjoyed displaying his skill at parties and parish dances.
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| My father twisting with my Aunt Kitty, 1979 |
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Philip Toledano, one of my favorite photographers, also frequently photographed his father, creating a beautiful and moving book.
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I strongly recommend reading Rollo Romig’s 2010 New Yorker review about it.
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In 1986 I invited several of my relatives to my studio for a series of formal portraits. I used 2¼ film to make 11 exposures of each person, and then let them photograph me with the 12th frame. I began with my father.
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I never completed this project because it became too emotional for me. I photographed with a portrait lens plus a closeup attachment, and saw all too clearly the passing of time in the faces of people I loved. I thought of Rilke’s poem about his father.
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Portrait of My Father as a Young Man
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In the eyes dream. The brow as if in touch
with something far away. About the lips
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immense youth, unsmiling seductiveness,
and across the full ornamental braids
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of the slim aristocratic uniform
the saber’s basket-hilt and both the hands–
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waiting, calmly, urged toward nothing.
And now scarcely visible: as if they would be
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first, grasping the distant, to disappear.
And all the rest self-shrouded
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and erased as if we didn’t understand
and by something deep in its own depths dimmed–.
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O you swiftly fading daguerreotype
in my more slowly fading hands.
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–Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Arthur Snow) New Poems, 1907 North Point Press; 1st Edition (December 10, 2001)
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Deanna Dikeman is another excellent photographer whose parents are the subjects of a powerful book–Leaving and Waving.
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She explains how this project evolved on her website.
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My father moved to Florida and lived there happily for many years but when his health began to fail, he returned to Brooklyn. He adjusted well to life in an assisted living facility in Sheepshead Bay, and made new friends easily.
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| Tampa, 2008 & Brooklyn, 2012 |
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Everything went smoothly until my father fractured his leg getting out of bed in 2013. He survived a difficult surgery but never fully recovered, and died a few months later. I was hesitant, but decided to photograph him while he was in the hospital.
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| In the hospital, 2013 |
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I know that I was influenced by the powerful photographs Richard Avedon made of his dying father.
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| Jacob Israel Avedon, 1974 |
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The photographer himself discussed this image and others of his father in a 1974 Camera Magazine article reproduced here.
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Artist Debra Brehmer has written about these photos more recently.
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My father thought that he had been in a car accident, and asked me every day how his insurance case was going. I eventually told him that we had settled out of court, and he was happy with the amount of money I he received.
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While in the hospital, he often held our old family telephone book out to me. He pointed to the name of a deceased friend or relative, and asked me to call them. After several weeks my father left the hospital, but was not well enough to return to his former residence. He moved into a nursing home and did his best to make a life there. He died after a few months, and was buried with military honors at Calverton National Cemetery, Long Island.
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| Lockwood Funeral Home, Brooklyn, 2013 |
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My father worked as a longshoreman in Brooklyn and was especially proud of the years when he was the harbormaster for the Luckenbach pier in Sunset Park. One of his duties was slipping the dock lines of departing cargo ships off the pier’s cleats. He took me with him one winter night when I was about 11 years old. After he loosened the last rope, a lone sailor pulled it up and slowly waved goodbye. As we watched the boat ease away from the pier into the river, there was one long blast from the ship’s horn.
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| Larry’s portrait by Anna Delaney |
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When I returned to South Brooklyn in 1970 after two years in California as a VISTA Volunteer, I was 22 years old with no plans and a $30 camera I barely knew how to use. I took a course at the School of Visual Arts, a job with the telephone company and began to photograph my family and friends. Things worked out better than I could have expected. I’ve been making photographs for over 50 years, and have some things I’d like to share.
Check out my book, Aqueduct, here.
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Readers can respond directly to me – larryracioppo@gmail.com.
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