My first published book TELL IT LIKE IT IS (1967) will be reprinted this fall by #BurnBooks..While in grad school I went to live with a family in Norfolk, Virginia. Slept on their sofa, set up a darkroom nearby. The “contribution $2.” went to a local church and intended to pay for food and clothing for disadvantaged families in this neighborhood. This was my first full blown essay and my first time being totally absorbed by a culture outside my own. This first essay/book was a precursor to all that followed with my work.
Sign me up…..
Sign me up straight away please!!
BTW David…
Did you ever in later years manage to keep on contact with the family?
Great news!! The launching of the book, can be a “vernissage” with the people photographed in ’67.
Are they still alive?? Hope so!
@ ALL:
Buy the book, the contribution is only 2 USD!!!! :-P
Shine.P.
PAUL … PATRICIO
After I shot this, I went straight off to grad school with wife and baby….The book came out after I was already locked deep into the Univ of Missouri and in total survival mode….So I lost touch with the family…Bad boy….However , right now I am going to have the local Norfolk newspaper help me find them…This was a big family…6 kids….Some of them surely still live within the circulation range of the Virginian Pilot and I am confident we will find them…
Worse than losing touch with the family, we dumped a bunch of these books..No space to keep them..No sense of lasting value at the time…at this very moment only 4 copies of this book are in my possession, and I know of very few in the hands of a few friends….
Bruce Davidson was the one who told me just two years ago that TELL IT LIKE IT HIS preceded EAST 100th STREET by 4 years which will make TELL IT ultimately have some historical value..Now mind you, this is a small book. Not lots of pictures. Yet I know of no other photographer of that era who documented one family as did I. Davidson shot a whole street, I did just one family. Davidson of course knew what he was doing, in Magnum, lived in New York, and he made a major contribution to documentary photography. I was 22, clueless, and only going by gut instinct on every aspect of shooting, editing, etc…and living in Columbia, Missouri at school when the book came out…too shy to even put my name on the cover….the purist project I have ever done..or will ever do….
So this is one of those retro discoveries so to speak….I rarely go retro…I live in the now…yet this is frankly just one of those things that cannot be denied….It happened…In 1967 and before I ever met even another photographer other than my classmates, no cred of any kind, and so it is some kind of photo miracle or however you want to look at it….
Cheers David
Lets Tell it Like It Is……HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!
All the best DAH from Miami!
Enjoy and Party ALL night!!!!
Go CARLO !!! Oh,yeah …Happyyyyyyyyy BURN birthdays ahead MR.HARVEY !!!
TELL IT LIKE IT IS …the “eye of the eagle” was focusing on one family back then…
and now 2014, here we are !!!
WHAT NOT TO LOVE …the journey of life,the circle of friends!!!
Love,Peace,Health and Photography !!!
civi