Picture Perfect

One recent rainy day in the Picture Collection of Mid-Manhattan Library, just shuffling through a fistful of photos, we happened upon this–uh, SIGNED photo of Henry James.

Now we are loathe to confess it, but Mr. James is one of those rare writers of whom we have developed a pronounced preference for the Big Screen versions of his works over the textual alternatives. Who could forget Helena Bonham Carter distractedly roaming the dark streets of Venice in Wings of the Dove? Or Christopher Reeve tripping over the love that dare not speak its name in The Bostonians? Or Cherry Jones’ tour de force as The Heiress? (Okay, it was on the stage, but still…) Despite our lowbrow taste for Mr. James served up as entertainment (well, Colm Toibin’s masterful fiction about James wasn’t exactly an endorsement of Mr. James’ personal character), we were pleased to think we might turn the Berg Collection green with envy–until we examined the signature a little more closely and found ourselves terrified. The pen that signed the portrait scrawled the date: Jan. 3, 1918. Yet the hand that penned the novels last moved in this world on Feb. 28, 1916. So who IS this Miss Jordan, who prompted Mr. James to journey so far from that undiscovered country merely to send her his regards? We also express our admiration for the skill of the photographer, H. Walter Barnett, who has caught perfectly that otherworldly look about the eyes.

(Perhaps the stroke of Mr. James' pen was cramped and the date was actually Jan. 3, 1908? Mind you, I only conjecture....)

Last night at Mid-Manhattan, maybe to combat the darkness and rain, we were talking about light—the light of the camera, that is. In concert with Aperture Foundation, the acclaimed and venerable American institution dedicated to fine art photography (and publisher of the renowned Aperture Magazine as well as an unparalleled array of photography books) we presented the first of a Photographer@the Library series, with Gillian Laub, talking about Testimony, her recently published book.
Bravery. It’s a term often used to describe soldiers and police and firefighters and others who put themselves in harm’s way to accomplish a greater good. It’s not often used to describe the simple process of living. But it’s the word that I could hear every moment as I looked at Gillian Laub’s haunting portraits of Arab and Israeli young people going about their days – picnicking, playing, sitting, standing, lounging, living – in a sunny land where at any moment, at many moments, tragedy can come calling. It’s a word that could be used to describe Gillian herself, an American Jew who first visited Israel when she was in high school, and who found herself called back to tell a story with a camera—not the story of the conflict but the story of individuals living around it and in it and through it every day.
The story is in the pictures—in the expressions, in the eyes, in the clothes, in the missing limbs. Although Ms. Laub has published photo-essays in The New York Times Magazine (she tells a funny story about wearing the wrong clothes to a shoot with the Israeli Prime Minister), she wasn’t sure this time that her camera—which after all is limited by what the eye can see—could tell the whole story. So she asked each of the people that she photographed to write a statement to accompany the picture—and to approach it as as their last will and testament. Thus, we have Testimony, a vivid interplay of the visual and the voice in framing a portrait of a brave people—each in some way searching for peace.
After the program, Ms. Laub ran down to catch a taxi to Newark. She was flying to Israel with her camera to attend the wedding of one of the injured women she photographed.
Stay on the lookout for further collaborations with Aperture in drawing exceptional photographers to the Library to discuss their work—coming in late Spring 2008!