My Only Weakness

Everybody has a story. It's that simple.

Tonight's story began at UR for the screening of  "To Render a Life: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and the Documentary Vision."

It was being shown as a tie-in to the "The Social Lens: Photographs by Dorothea Lange and Her Contemporaries" exhibit which I'd already seen.

When I walked in and took a seat, I was immediately invited to move closer to two other attendees, so I did.

Hell, if strangers want me to sit closer to them, I'm happy to.

The woman's face looked familiar, so I used a few well-placed inquiries to find out why.

Turns out she's lived here nine years, is on the board of Firehouse Theater so I had no doubt seen her at performances.

One story down and the movie hadn't even started.

The film's purpose was two-fold: to consider the classic 1941 book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee and Walker Evans and to document a present day family living in rural poverty.

So in 1988, filmmaker Ross Spears spent three years documenting a family living in abject poverty just twenty miles south of Charlottesville.

Using excerpts read from Agee's book, he set the scene.

We see a Harvard class hearing a lecture about the wonders of the book (and since this was 1988, none of the students texted or looked at their phones) from a teacher whose class is at capacity every year.

We see the Washington Post's book critic, Jonathan Yardley, talk about why he doesn't like the book.

Howell Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times, talks about its significance.

But the heart of the film comes from the three years the filmmaker spent with an extremely poor family documenting their lives from 1988 to 1991 and interspersed with readings from Agee's book about the poor rural families he and Walker Evans documented back in the 1930s.

Evans' intent as a photographer was always to stay invisible and Spears does the same.

With a voice reading from the book about the distinct smell of poor, white Southern houses, the camera glides over shots of roaches and flies on food and furniture.

It's disturbing and it's factual.

As one social documentary photographer says during the movie, "Taking pictures of suffering is a way to scream."

The film could have been construed as one long scream.

The family followed in the film lives off of one part-time income with no running water or indoor plumbing (and this is 1988).

Except for the father who did a lot of manual labor, they're all overweight, some approaching morbid obesity.

Both the husband and wife have missing teeth and she's only 48 and he's 55.

Their faces look so much older, clearly a result of a hard life.

But like the social documentarians of the '30s, this is what people look like when they live these lives.

And I'm betting that to the students in the room, 1980s poverty was as obscure to them as 1930s poverty.

After the film, the director spoke and took questions.

Ross Spears admitted that he'd grown close to the family he'd filmed and gave us updates about them today.

One woman said, "Thank you so much for this film. I wish everyone I know could see it."

I've no doubt that that was the same feeling expressed by people who saw the 1930s photographs of people scraping through the Depression.

When asked how difficult it had been to get the family to agree to the long-term shooting schedule, Spears was clear.

"Everyone has a story to tell," he said, "And they want to share it. Social documentarians are fortunate enough to be there when it happens."

Satisfied that I had what it takes to make note of what's happening, I left the labyrinthine UR campus for Church Hill.

Despite the later hour, The Roosevelt was hopping when I arrived but a kind soul let me take the one empty bar stool next to him.

Bartender T. offered up some Gabrielle Rause Vin de Gris, but I let the rainy weather dictate a red, opting for White Hall cabernet franc.

The guy on the stool next to me turned out to be a childhood friend of the kitchen brotherhood, so one of them introduced us and I now had company.

When his pork shank with buttermilk spaetzle in a mustard sauce arrived, he was generous enough to share a bite.

Since when do I take pig from a virtual stranger? Since, I don't know, always?

Next he offered up a bite of his flap steak with cheddar bacon mashed potatoes and housemade A-1 sauce, which I was just as happy to avail myself of.

Naturally when my beef shanks and gnocchi arrived, I offered him some, too.

In return, I asked him for his story, gleaning that he lives in Roanoke, was here on business and always has a good time when he's in Richmond.

While I was eating my cheeseburger (cheddar, bacon onion jam), a first for me at the Roosevelt, a guy a few seats down the bar caught my attention and began a conversation with me.

He, too, was drinking the White Hall, but unlike my Roanoke neighbor, he didn't offer me any of his food (tonight's special, the grilled tuna) because he'd already finished it.

A few well-placed questions and I knew he lived a couple of blocks away, hadn't been in the Roosevelt in months and came from upstate New York.

We chatted enthusiastically about how rental properties tie you to an area, the benefits of learning a trade (say, electrician) and how much there is to do culturally in Richmond.

In a comical moment, one of the sous chefs walked by saying, "Key lime pie, it's my only weakness."

I doubted that, questioned him and discovered that it's his only food weakness.

I overheard a guy saying he was going to the nearby market where they carry, "Head wraps, cigarettes, Dom Perignon and cell phones."'

Sounded like a hell of a market selection to me, but when asked, said I didn't need anything.

When he returned, he had a tale of seeing three, well, never mind, but he had a story.

Because everyone does and we all want to share ours.

You could say telling my story this way is my only weakness.

Okay, it's the only weakness I'm going to admit to tonight.

Paying Attention Anyway

Who better to take to a photography gallery talk than a photographer?

When I picked him up off the street (don't ask), he had his newest camera with him, although he was still trying to figure out where he could find film for it.

Admittedly, that's a bit tougher than it was for the photographers of the '30s and '40s.

VMFA's Jeffrey Allison was leading a gallery talk called "A Singular Gesture: Dorothea Lange" about the practitioners of social documentary photograph currently on view at UR.

More specifically the incredible stable of photographers in the employ of the Farm.Security Administration.

You know, back in the day when our government helped support struggling artists during hard economic times.

Allison began by explaining the difference between photojournalism and photo documentation.

"Photo documentarians end up living the life they were shooting," he explained.

Speaking of photographer Lewis Hine's work, which always pushed for social change through imagery of the modern workplace and technology, Allison reminded us that this was during a time when viewers didn't question the veracity of a photo.

Also known as pre-Photoshop.

He spent some time on Mike Disfarmer who'd changed his last name from Meyers to Disfarmer the better to disassociate himself from his agrarian roots.

Unlike Hines, his work wasn't about social causes; he was just a workaday guy shooting heartland folks.

What I found most interesting was that there's currently a "Disfarmer Project" going on in the same area of the country with two photographers seeking to document descendants of Disfarmer's original subjects.

We saw some of uber-photographer Walker Evans' work, all tightly controlled and brilliantly composed "like a visual tone poem," according to Allison.

His pictures were works of art first and social documents second.

I was surprised to learn that Evans had worked in Fredericksburg, making him the only one with a Virginia connection in the show.

Looking at a photo of a sign advertising the movie "Grapes of Wrath," Allison asked of the largely student crowd, "How many of you have seen "Grapes of Wrath?"

More hands than you'd expect went up.

"The rest of you should watch it. You can see it on Netflix, for goodness' sake!" Allison instructed.

I'd love to know if any of them follow his advice.

When we moved to the gallery with Lange's photos, Allison asked of us, "Anyone come for the lecture at the opening of this exhibit?"

I raised my hand but didn't see any others raised.

Looking right at me, he instructed self-deprecatingly, "Don't pay attention to anything I say."

It was pretty funny, but I did anyway.

In fact, a lot of Allison's talk was approachable funny, not to mention wildly enthusiastic about photography in general.

I noticed that my photography friend seemed to be enjoying himself.

He may have left his camera in the car, but I've no doubt he was inspired to find some film for it real soon.

Today's lesson: It's never too soon to start documenting.

He may even end up with a work of art.

The FSA Eight

Tonight it was all about the women.

In this case, "Women of the FSA Working in the  South 1935-1943," the lecture topic at UR by Beverly Brannan, curator of photography at the Library of Congress.

The diminutive Brannan was a terrific speaker, full of information and clearly still wildly enthusiastic about her job tracking down information about female photographers.

She immediately put these women in context, saying that only eight women had worked for the Farm Security Administration, but those eight had created 19,318 black and white photographs, roughly 20% of the work.

The rest of the FSA's photographic output was done by a hundred men.

I could make the point that if eight women could do 20% of the work, they should have only needed 32 men to do the other 80%, but I'll let that slide.

Brannan's talk was in conjunction with the exhibit "The Social Lens: Photographs by Dorothea Lange and Her Contemporaries" so naturally she began by talking about Lange.

Practically everyone is familiar with her iconic photograph "Migrant Mother," many of us even in the audience knowing that the haggard looking women was only 32 when the picture was taken.

But what I learned from Brannan was that the woman, who was a widow, had been shunned by the other migrant women for fear she'd steal their husbands.

And that she was known as a fantastic dancer.

It's hard to tell all that from the grim image of her and her three children.

We got a lesson in the government's Resettlement Administration, the people who were trying to help destitute families find a better place to live.

People unable to make minimum wage.

Farm workers who'd been replaced by machinery.

Families who left the South because they couldn't survive.

Like the couple from Scandinavia who were resettled to Alaska, the better to use their cold farming skills.

Fortunately, Lange wrote detailed captions for every picture, thus ensuring an accurate record of  her photographic subject and their circumstances.

We heard about another female photographer, Marian Post Wolcott, who often had to charm her way out of difficult situations in rural locations where strange women were not welcome.

There were photographs of the dorms built in Arlington, Virginia to house all the women war workers.

I learned that the FSA had no pay grade for photographers, so they were paid the Clerk/Typist rate.

Not surprisingly, that rate was $2,300 for women and $3,000 for men.

After the lecture, the near capacity crowd headed over to UR's Hartnett Museum of Art to see the exhibition.

I'd already bet my date that we'd see a certain Frenchman who always seems to be at events with free food and drink (there was a reception) and sure enough, there he was, making a meal of it.

We eschewed the reception for the photographs and began making our way through the crowds.

"Out of Rear Window" showed laundry hanging on a fire escape, but the interesting part was the notation that the family who lived there had been put on a list for resettlement.

Their apartment was in NYC and they were being resettled to Highlands, New Jersey.

It didn't have quite the same resonance as the Scandinavians being resettled to Alaska, but I'm guessing they were just as eager to go.

Moving through the galleries of social documentary photography was a history lesson for the period of the late thirties and early forties.

Faces evoked desperation and there was little joy to be seen on anyone's faces, even the children.

Proud men faced the camera unflinchingly.

Men stood in bread lines for a handout from the White Angel, a rich woman doing good.

Fact is, the FSA was having this world documented so that they'd have justification for Congress of why funds needed to be allocated for aid.

The proof was all over the walls of the galleries.

Leave it to eight women to empathetically capture a country in shambles.

Not to mention that they did it for 75% of the pay.

And often they had to do it in areas where women and/or whites, much less those with a camera, were not welcome.

Luckily, they had charm to get them through.

That and womanly determination.