If the National Geographic was the magazine world's equivalent of a radio station for
alternative and contemporary photography in the 80s and 90s, the photographers have
always been her rock stars, bad boys and a few girls pushing the boundaries of conventional
wisdom with some classic albums, influential singles and more than a few hotel rooms trashed
along the way.
It was a brutal youth that laid much of the groundwork for more than a few to follow.
And it seems like David Allen Harvey has always been a part of this scene.
Even when he isn't, his influence lingers and follows a baseline that fills the room.
He has always been a strong voice in the ensemble, but an even more powerful as an independent
one.
Like photography's version of Neil Young with a touch of Keith Richards, or at least
the version of Keith Richards is imagined by the pirate Jack Sparrow.
My mother always told me never trust a guy with three first names, yet try to say the
words David Allen Harvey and try not to smile.
You can't.
It's the thought of it.
Some memory or a reaction that curls up and breaks, kissed by the spirit if you will.
This must be what it's like to be selected and captured in a Harvey photograph because
we are all subjects, willing or not to be cast in his play.
Some come willing while others have to be placed under the spell of the fear.
And through it all, David remains David in personality and vision and regardless of
the journey and regardless of the destination.
Please welcome David Allen Harvey.
So let's start with a couple pictures from your childhood and you have an interesting
start.
I'm still in my childhood.
You're still in your childhood.
That's right.
Actually, I love you had in one of the installation, one of your wall panels said something to
extent of, I'm a beach bomb.
I just admitted at this anyway, but so let's go back to your real childhood.
Well, I mean, just go back just one second because I think many people in the audience
know the story, but many people probably do not.
But I was making books from the time I was 14.
I was the editor of the Harvey Herald, the family newspaper and yeah, my brother and
sister were the bird editor and the cartoon editor also existed, but I was the editor
and the chief photographer.
At the end of 1958, I wanted to make a really nice gift for my grandparents.
And so I hand lettered this.
This was the inside cover of the book, Offer a Family Drive, and you can go ahead and have
it.
Thanks.
Sorry about that.
Our family did this.
We didn't have an ideal family, but I sort of wanted to make us an ideal family.
And on Sunday, we would go off on a family drive.
And I was amazed that a 14 year old was composing an image like this.
First that you were choosing to make a picture of an actual moment opening the car door,
the frame within the frame of the child and your mother in the background and shooting
over the back of your father, like to do all of that is so instinctive and so it just
was amazing.
So by this time, Kathy, I had a Leica 3F that I paid $195 for $10 a week at a time from
my newspaper route money right here in Virginia, in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
And I had the Leica because by that time I was hardcore photographer at 14.
I was in it by 11 or 12 lightning hit me one day and I knew that I wanted to be a photographer.
So by this time I was already considered myself a serious photographer by 14.
And I had been looking at magazines and books and mostly magazines.
And so that's how I decided somehow I knew that it would be the right thing to do to
put one picture per page, center it and write a caption under it.
My brother Gary was one of the only members of the family who was willing to be photographed.
I have maybe more pictures of him than anybody else.
Somebody the other day said, Harvey, this old stuff looks like you're trying to imitate
Martin Parr or something.
And I said, but except, yeah, that's right, except that Martin Parr wasn't born yet.
Yeah, I was imitating him somehow.
My mother and my father was traveling a lot like a lot of dads do.
And so my mother would end up really kind of raising the kids and mowing the lawn and
other things.
And my dad took us on fishing trips.
So it was kind of a classic family situation.
And I had an incredible appreciation for family.
I'm a family man now.
I mean, my blood family who is fortunately here with me today or a lot of them are, and
our family was really close.
And I made them in my mind even more close than we may have been, if that can be understood.
Because I had been isolated medically when I was six.
You know, if you take a six year old kid and you put him in a room for three months and
nobody else is in there and you're locked in there solitary confinement.
When you come out of that, you know, you're not going to be the same kid you were when
you went in.
And so it took me a long time to get over that.
The disease was over.
Everybody thought that was it.
But the psychological things still haunt me to this day, of course, as it would anybody.
And everybody out there has got a similar story.
Everybody's got childhood trauma.
But gratitude was one of the things that I came out with.
And I've had to deal with a lot of other issues.
And so my pictures tend to be joyful just because I was glad to be out of there.
I think it's as simple as that.
This picture I took when I was 18 years old or 19, like the picture before it, when I
was trying to be Cartier-Bresson, I was 18, 19, and I put pictures in an envelope and
that last picture was in the Museum of Modern Art curated by Modern White.
I saw a thing in pop photo and I put a picture and envelope and it ended up on the walls
of the Museum of Modern Art, which I never saw because I couldn't afford to go there.
That's my grandmother.
And so I at first tried to be Henri, that's who I wanted to be when I grew up.
And then I think every artist copies somebody in the beginning, right?
But then I got a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia and I started
shooting color then.
I experimented with color, which led to a variety of projects which led to National Geographic,
which was a big part of my life.
But like I tell my students now, you've got to go off and show people what you can do
with no funding whatsoever, which I still do also.
So a number of these photos, this batch coming up, are from your book Divided Soul.
Tell us about that.
Well Divided Soul.
It's about 20 years of work, right?
Yeah, 20, 25 years worth of work.
I got very interested in Iberia in Spain and Portugal and the migration into the Americas.
So it involves four cultures, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Africans because it was the
Portuguese and the Spanish who first brought the Africans to Brazil and then they migrated
up into the Americas and then of course the indigenous population as well.
So it was those four cultures mixed.
And Jose Camila Sale, a very famous Spanish writer, I completely lifted the term Divided
Soul from him in his book Travels in the Alcaria and that became the baseline for the work
because he was talking about the conquistadores with God on their side and the military also
on their side and of course I could see that that was happening with many cultures long
after that and long before that with justification for conquering, for example.
And so I spent a lot of time in Bahia, in Brazil, in Mexico, in Cuba and I put it all
together in Divided Soul.
Chris Boot, who is here today, got it published for me at Fiden as a book finally.
So I was thinking, you know, with listening to some of the other talks, it's always a
question of what the photographer is seeking.
When you head out into the world, the thing that defines each of you is you're looking
for something different.
You know when Alex Soth is out there, he's looking for the lonely guy, as he said, he's
looking for longing.
He's looking for people trying to connect with other people.
He walks into, let's say, a moose lodge and I think his heart beats faster when he sees
that lonely guy in the corner.
Or Larry Fink talked a lot, obviously we look at his pictures and it's quite the opposite.
He, I think, is immediately drawn to a dense grouping of humanity.
His heart beats faster when he's at an Upper East Side cocktail party and there's 10 people
in the frame and he has to make sense and order out of it.
What are you looking for?
I have my theory, but I want to hear you.
Well, no, I think maybe I'd rather hear your theory.
I'm a little bit like both of those guys.
There's a part of me that is like Alec and I was listening to what he said and there's
another part of me, maybe a little more like Larry.
I loved everything that he said, but no, like most people, I'm a little bit of each of those
things and I don't know that I'm necessarily looking for something.
I was listening to Alec intellectualize his approach to things and Larry a little bit
too and I know for sure that when I'm photographing, I'm not thinking at all.
Thinking is not what's happening.
You fit the description of the full page and the blank mind.
No, listen, I read history.
I study that.
I'm very much interested in current events.
I don't photograph current events, but I know about them and I take pictures that look
like this one, which has nothing to do with current events, but if I were to describe,
yeah, like this picture, Catholic Church, the horse from Arabia into Spain into Portugal,
conquered the Americas, and the Africans that were brought as slaves, all in one picture.
So there it is as a picture, but no, I've got all that stuff in my head in my hard
drive here, but when I'm actually photographing, I'm putting myself in Cuba, but like when
I'm in a situation like this where there's no editorial reason for this picture whatsoever,
no, I'm not thinking 99% of the time when I'm actually shooting, it's just a, I'm in
the zone.
Something is happening that I can't even really describe.
It's an incredible experience to have that.
And it probably is the thing that keeps me going more than anything, certainly more than
stage talks.
No, I'm touching people sometimes when I photograph.
I'm literally physically touching this family.
They invited me over every day in Trinidad, Cuba, where Cortez launched, where the Catholic
church was, and so I'm, get very, very close to people.
And then sometimes I'm back and distant because both of those things are, I saw a quote from
you.
It's something when I was reading about you there, where you said something like, when
I'm within 15 inches of somebody, something happens, like that you always have to be in
there, that the sparks start to fly.
If you're right in there, literally bodily again, it was interesting this week that that's
been discussed like with Larry, like muscular bodily physical presence in the world as much
as a theoretical visual.
This is not the KKK, by the way.
This is the Catholic Confridia in Sevilla in Spain.
It looks like one thing, it's actually something else.
This is a part of me, too.
I mean, this is a rave in Spain at five o'clock in the morning.
I went to take this picture.
I figured I could shoot this.
I found out about it.
I figured I could do it in two days, and three weeks later I got out of there on National
Geographic, National Geographic expense account, Statute of Limitations must be up by now,
right?
Yeah, exactly.
No, so I get involved in all...
Nothing leaves the paramount.
Yeah, right.
Stay here.
No, so the symbols, I wrote everything down on a piece of paper.
Blood, Catholicism, passion, military, all the key, what we call keywords now, and I
just wrote it on a scrap piece of paper, put them up here, and so that I would see things
that would relate to those keywords, but never working off of a shot list.
And it's interesting, because I think part of it is the architecture of your work, the
sort of structural basis is that.
So you read a lot about the history.
You have certain signifiers you're looking for.
You have a tale to tell whether it's the history of the Americas.
But I think often sometimes it's all an excuse for you to find the most perfect red.
The most vivid pink, the crazy collision of a certain kind of teal blue with a certain
kind of red or a certain sort of sapphire, and I love that, like that you've managed
to...
You're going simultaneously all the time down both tracks.
What I think of is just the pure visual sensualist track, let's say, what the Impressionists
were after.
So you know...
Well, the French Impressionists were my single biggest influence.
I mean, after Jules Verne and Mark Twain and Hemingway and all the people that I read
when I was a kid.
You can see it, because you're there in the world, and you're looking for these crazy
collisions of color that somehow make sense in your hands, with your eye and your framing,
you're making sense of the world through that, because it's always about seeking chaos and
then making sense of it in your own way and making order out of it.
But I love that you've managed to team that up, a pure, formal, abstract pursuit of the
most perfect red, or green, or yellow, and marry it to the historic...
And I'm definitely not thinking about any of that stuff when I'm doing it.
Historically...
No, it's interesting.
Do you see that?
No.
I actually...
What I'm thinking about, to tell you the truth, is the incredible difficulty, hardcore
black-and-white photographer from 12, all the way to 25, I think, when I got that fellowship
at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, color...
I always have looked at color as an incredible struggle, and I still think of myself as a
black-and-white photographer.
It's amazing.
The colors are there, but, well, Martin Parshoots, lots of different colors at the same time.
Almost all of my pictures are monochromatic, there's very few pictures with lots of color
in the same picture.
See, that's monochromatic.
Almost everyone you're going to see is...
I think there are a little bit of everything.
There's the monochromatic, but you also have somewhere there's incredible juxtaposition
of two or three colors you wouldn't expect to find.
Yeah, I find color really, really hard, and when people describe me as a color photographer,
I'm always a little bit surprised by that because, for me, it's so hard.
Well, it was really hard because I was like all my colleagues of my generation.
We were shooting color transparencies where you had to be absolutely right on.
Yep.
There was no Photoshop, so all of these pictures, once you're looking at it right now, are on
film, and you had to be right on it.
Yeah, you were allowed to actually...
I was very glad that I was classically trained as a black and white photographer.
My color pictures are a result of Ansel Adams' zone system.
Wow.
No, really, I'm a zone system guy.
My digital files don't need any work either.
I mean, I probably should loosen up a little bit, but I can't.
I kind of have to get it right in the camera.
I can't help it at this point.
You're also unusual in that you pivot back and forth.
I mean, most of your work is color over the years, but you've also had a couple, and we'll
see later, and of course, it's present in your exhibition, credible black and white work,
and that's a little unusual.
Often, when people choose to go heavily into black and white, when they reach that certain
kind of moment in their career, when they're totally...
No, I don't have any.
I don't have any conflict.
They're doing this.
Stay with it, but you're able to sort of segue back and forth.
Again, I think part of it is, compositionally, your eye was there from the time you were
14, what you were doing, and then your desire, something in who you are, seeks out those
reds and greens.
Yeah, I guess so.
It's funny because I did a project on American Family, which I dropped to do based on a true
story which we'll talk about, but at one point, I was shooting ISO 400 triacs and Kodak portrait
film with a Mamiya 7, and in my camera bag were both films, and I would randomly grab
one or the other.
I would randomly grab black and white, randomly grab color.
Because I was doing a family album, everybody's refrigerated or family album was a combination
of black and white and color, and so I didn't know whether I was shooting triacs or color.
That's amazing.
Yeah, so I'm not...
So that really is true for what you're saying, that when you're making these pictures.
When I'm shooting black and white, I'm thinking the same thing.
If I were shooting this picture in black and white, I'd be thinking exactly the same stuff
that I'm thinking about as a color picture.
Technically, I've learned how to do it as a color photographer.
This was a story that got commissioned by the geographic and then was later published
by Powerhouse on Hip Hop.
And no, I shoot the same either way.
I mean, the light has got to be good for me in black and white, the light's got to be
good for me in color, and it's the same light for me.
Tell us a little bit about your sort of working process when you're with people.
You've mentioned often that you know most of the people that you're photographing.
When you go on these projects, you get to know the people that you're hanging out with.
You go in depth.
Talk about that.
Well, yeah, because I can't...
People do see me in an extroverted way, and I've had discussions with my family about
this, but I feel like a complete introvert.
I'm really afraid, no, like connecting with large groups of people, which I seem to be
able to do okay.
It's actually my worst nightmare.
Going up to strangers and photographing them is my worst nightmare today.
I photographed my family at home that you saw in black and white, right?
And there are people in the room who have been with me on assignment, and they'll tell
you that's true.
I will build a little family around me all the time.
Tell it like it is as it's coming in.
That was a family.
My family.
People build the family every time.
And Candy here was my digital assistant in Rio, and then she became a muse, model, whatever,
for the Based on a True Story book.
I would say 90% of the pictures that I take, I've made friends with the people somehow.
It could be a five-minute thing.
Some stuff is random on the street, a la carte brison, but I had to break away from him.
I had to break away from black and white, because he did black and white, and I had
to break away from the fact that he didn't know anybody.
He didn't hang out at bars and go in people's houses or anything like that.
He was out on the street.
I admired him because he was able to make something out of nothing.
He and Robert Frank were able, they didn't need anything else.
They didn't need a war or a famous person or anything going on other than just walk
out here on the street and make a great picture.
And I love that about those guys.
But then again, I had to break away.
I went into color, and then I did the credible sin for those guys, which was to photograph
people you know.
I'm sure it's a sin for some people out here too, but I'm too shy to meet too many strangers.
I mean, no, in New York, well, no, seriously, in New York, I don't go out.
People come over to my house.
I'm sociable with my friends who come over and drink all my beer and whatever.
But I don't go out to bars, and I'm not looking for social life ever.
Unless it's happening in my living room.
Same in the Outer Banks.
So based on a true story has, yeah, people that I know in there, and that's why I didn't
call it a book, National Geographic, Rand Rio, as a straight documentary story.
And when I did based on a true story, or I say my son Brian and I did based on a true
story basically, no, I didn't want people to get confused by that concept.
It's all documentary, but I'm very often photographing people I know.
But they're still real people, just like people that I don't know.
Based on a true story, all done in Rio, over what period of time?
Well, I shot, let's see, it was all part of Divided Soul actually.
I mean, I did the Divided Soul book, but I'm still interested in South America.
And why did you choose Rio for that?
Rio is a Shakespearean stage, I mean, the physicality of Rio.
I mean, the way it's shaped, the mountains, and see its beautiful place, I think any photographer
likes Rio.
I mean, it's sensuous, it's fun, the music, the beat, the people, the Brazilians are great.
So there's every reason to be in Rio.
And I sold the geographic on a documentary on Rio, and I shot it for them.
And then after that, I did my own thing, so to speak, but it wasn't detached from their
thing.
So through here, you're going to find pictures that were in National Geographic, right?
And then you're going to find pictures that Geographic might not publish, because again,
I used a muse, and with Brian, you know, putting the book together as a novella, because Brian
does know me better than I know myself, and was able to structure it like a novella.
Now, it always takes a lot of people for somebody like me to sit up here and show their pictures.
It's not just me.
I mean, based on the true story, Diego and Eva on production, there's a lot of people
behind me, propping me up and making me look good.
But I do actually take the pictures all by myself.
Everything else is the result of somebody else.
But Brian took the...
But tell us about the layout, because this is a revolutionary approach to a way to present
photos in a book.
It is.
I mean, an unbound book, an unbound book was not a new idea, but she should...
And I was very nervous about that idea.
And she convinced me that maybe I should try it, and I thought, hmm, it's going to be...
She made a little dummy, and I said, you know, I don't know if I can do that or not, but
yeah, maybe.
I'm going to do that.
And then Brian got ahold of it, and it wasn't just that two pictures could be together.
He made a Rubik's Cube thing, I mean, he's weeks, you know, in my New York apartment,
and I kind of helped a little bit.
Candy, the girl with the beach ball, she was finding pictures.
She's the one that found the blow job picture.
Yeah, no, really, I mean, she went through every frame that I shot.
And so again, it was two years off and on for National Geographic, and then another...
With the muses I shot heavy for a month, but I just photographed, I took the people that
I knew, Nan Golden and Sophia Cuppler, my mentors on that.
I don't know either one of them.
I know the ballad of sexual dependency, and I lost in translation, and I took what those
women did.
It's interesting.
You see it.
Oh yeah.
I see it.
You could see it.
Cuckoo Maison doesn't influence me at all the way I work now, not even slightly.
No, it's those women and others...
Well, it seems like the heat in Nan's pictures, the heat in her pictures, there's like a
nan photograph of whoever was hanging around her apartment.
And as a journalist, I wasn't supposed to do that.
And when I left National Geographic on good terms, I love National Geographic, gave me
a good worldview, joined Magnum.
I just started looking at things a little bit differently, and now I don't feel associated
with anybody, not National Geographic, not Magnum.
I love both groups, but now I'm like really back where I was when I was a kid.
Wow.
I survived adulthood.
And you're still.
It is a survival.
So yeah, I'm having a lot of fun, and I'm loving being able to work independently.
I'm loving looking at the work of lots of other photographers, because believe me, I get really
tired of myself.
And you and I met teaching at Eddie Adams' workshop, so I spent a lot of time mentoring
young photographers, which I've done since I was a young photographer.
It's great that you share so much of that, but I think that I just wanted for a minute
more to talk about this, because in case not everyone knows, in this book, when I first
started to look at it, I was thinking, oh my goodness, he's totally doing all these
verticals because everything looked so beautiful this way, only to then realize, after kind
of paging through the book, that all of these are half a picture.
So David decided to take all of his wonderfully composed images and essentially cut them in
half and make them dip ticks when you view the book this way.
And I think it's important.
But you can take it apart.
It actually speaks to what you're looking for in the world, which is these crazy juxtapositions
of color.
And then if you take it apart, you can get the full image, because if you basically,
I mean, I just love it because I feel like it took guts to do it.
It took a certain kind of guts, you know, so, for example, the full picture is there
each time, but the book itself becomes half a picture, half a picture, half a picture,
and they make sense.
They visually hang together.
So you do think more like a painter, you know, you really are like George Seraugh lining
up the dots and trying to get him to bounce off each other.
That whole pointillism thing and cubism, a lot of things and the impressionists all influence
me.
But when, when Brian came up with the map, we knew, listen, the unbound thing, we knew
that if it was unbound, it would be analog interactive.
That's candy.
That's one frame.
You may want to talk about that frame.
Go back a second.
Well, she's not here to talk about that frame.
That was her idea, not mine.
Even if that was my idea, do you think I'm going to ask somebody to do that?
No.
I recognized a good imagination.
That was all her.
And I literally won picture.
The contact sheets in the, in the book, but the cool thing is the map that Brian made
that we knew people would take it apart like you just did.
And this is a way to put it back together again so you can see the story.
Because you had mentioned you'd like people to take it apart and rearrange it as they
see it.
But you really want them to go back to your way.
Because it's the right way.
You won't be able to do it.
No, there's thousands of combinations.
There's 66, you know, 66 pictures like that.
I forget how many thousands of combinations there are.
I doubt that you could get it back any better than, than the way he did it.
And that, that really is Brian.
That's not me.
Well, he's a filmmaker.
Great film editor.
So.
This made me think a little bit of Kiana Scott.
No, a lot of people deserve credit for different parts of it.
Sure.
Sure.
But the, yeah, people give me credit for this book.
And Martin Barr put this book in his book of books, volume three, and gave Brian credit
for the design, which was properly bestowed.
This is recent.
This is all really recent stuff.
And we were in a house of prostitution, a transvestite house of prostitution.
And I don't know what light Dan had on there, but he gave me a little light on that.
So this is a new book.
I'm doing the same thing.
Listen, I did Cuba and then I did divided soul.
And now I'm doing based on a true story, which is all color, but I'm doing a new book
called beach games.
It's all black and white.
Wow.
All black and white.
And, you know, you're not supposed to be, you can't do the sequel.
So it's got to be something I can't do this again.
But I can still, I guess I can, I'm allowed to work in Rio again and I'll do it in black
and white.
The pictures in beach games can look like they belong in this book, I think, in my opinion.
And anyway, we'll see what happens.
It's great to have two bodies of work that way from the same sort of subject.
This one tells us a little bit because this also has to do with you moving less journalism
or fiction, right?
This was in post-national geographic days, obviously.
But this is also pretty recent, two or three years old, I guess.
But Magnum was doing a portfolio for Sotheby's and they said, Harvey, we don't even believe
what we're about to say.
You're the only Magnum photographer who's never photographed any nudes.
And it was true.
You know, I photographed a lot of women, but they were always, it was always about the
eyes and the gesture.
You know, I knew from drawing class it was really hard to do a nude and I was too shy
to ever ask anybody about it and didn't even want to do it.
I liked the more possibility rather than, you know, at all there.
And I didn't know how to do it anyway.
I didn't have any nudes.
And then my...
And I think you also were drawn to the bright pink dress or the red, like again, there's
something else.
You don't talk about it, but the color is...
Yeah, that may be something can happen.
I always like that maybe something can happen moment.
And not that it already happened or it's for sure, maybe.
Well, let's just put a...
But in any case, and then Michelle and Susan Welchman and my other Jody, my female friend
said, Harvey, we're not going to...
Magnum wants you to shoot a nude, but we're not going to let you go to Brazil or Cuba.
We can see it already what this picture is going to be.
We're not going to let you do that.
You have to shoot a male nude.
And I, you know, and once the women in my life tell me I got to do something, I got
to do it.
Right?
And I was like panic-stricken.
Candy, this is the same girl with the beach ball, same girl in the cover.
She's still my assistant in New York at the time.
And she calls around NYU and gets a male model and we're up on my roof in New York in the
Caboots.
And I'm up there with this guy and I'm trying to think Roman sculpture, Greek sculpture.
I'm trying to come up with everything.
And the guy, you know, he's got a fantastic body and he's making all these poses.
I know I cannot publish these pictures, you know, and I'm embarrassed to be taking the
pictures anyway, but I was just doing it.
I saw a storm coming in over LaGuardia Airport in back and Candy was up there, you know,
looking bored, which she could do.
And I said, Candy, you know, that white dress that you had in Rio, would you please go put
that white dress on?
Because I see a storm coming and maybe we can do something.
I said, if I have you in the picture, I can shoot this guy.
I can't shoot this guy by himself.
There you go.
No, that's true.
Because you are.
David, I'm not going to put it on that dress.
I said, Candy, you know, and I could hardly ever make her do anything.
I said, Candy, please go put on the white dress.
So Candy reluctantly goes and put on the white dress.
Then she got into it.
I smoked a joint with the black nude dude, right?
Smoked a joint with the black nude dude.
Well, it's my rooftop in New York.
Come on.
Half of the audience has been there with me.
And Candy finds the rocking horse for kids, the pink horse, and it just all came together.
The storm rolled up.
I mean, that's just a straight shot.
And this is atypical for you in the sense that you usually, fiction, you said you pulled
the elements together.
Oh, yeah.
But the photojournalist side of me, react and move, was on, and I told him, I said, hey,
we're on it.
We're going to take him into the stormy.
No, I had to move really, really, no, I had to work like a photojournalist.
Let's go to the next one.
Yeah.
Anyway.
All right.
So.
Big jump.
Yeah.
All the way back to the beginning of your career here.
Yeah.
I'm 22 years old.
Brian, who designed based on a true story, is five months old.
No money, I took the last $400 that the family had, basically, and went to live in the Gettica's.
Charlie Hoffimer was a family friend who may or may not be here today.
I hope he is.
Charlie had been working with agencies in Norfolk, Virginia, working for disadvantaged
peoples.
And he knew I was a fanatic photographer.
There's Charlie in the back of that picture.
There's Charlie.
Charlie, you get cropped out in the book.
Watch, you're out of the book, but you're on the wall over at McGuffey and you're up
on the screen right now.
Because Charlie was there, and he was an aspiring photographer too, but mostly Charlie became
an attorney, and he was very interested in, we were both into the civil rights movement.
You know, it was either the Vietnam War or the civil rights movement for people in our
generation.
He was going into the Peace Corps, and I wanted to do some good.
You know, I felt a little guilty being a white middle class kid in Virginia Beach to tell
you the truth.
And I left the fun of the beach, and I even left my five-month-old son, Brian, and wife,
Sue, and moved into what we called the ghetto at the time.
And the Liggins family, bless them, and Charles put it together, and we created a little book
that we were going to sell for $2 to provide food and clothing for the disadvantaged in
Norfolk.
It was going to the Norfolk ministerial to the church.
And the Liggins family, bless them, allowed me into their lives, and this was 48 years
ago, and we just republished the book now.
By the way, the profits, if there are any profits after we pay all of our expenses, are
going back to the Liggins family and to a scholarship fund that I'm setting up for minority
photographers.
I'll contribute what I can.
That's great.
I hope that others will follow.
That's so great.
So can we just hold on this picture just for a second?
Yeah, because I'm often, based on a true story, which we sold as a collector edition to people
who could afford it.
It was expensive, but it was worth it because it was in the art market.
But then we gave 2,000 copies away for free in the favelas in Brazil.
Same paper and everything.
But Roberta Tavares, who's here in the audience, she helped make that happen, so for two weeks,
Candy, cover girl.
All right.
No, she went down and Roberta, and we went into the favelas, and we went to schools,
and we gave this.
Yeah, it's great.
I signed copies for free.
It's great.
The same thing is happening with this.
Let's go back in time, though, because I think for a lot of people here, it would be interesting
to hear from you what you were, again, what you were seeking as a photographer, 22 years
old, right?
Shooting in black and white film.
What were you trying to say?
I was trying to say that I felt that creating awareness in my neighborhood, I was in an
all-white neighborhood.
The only black people we saw in my neighborhood were the maids that everybody had a maid back
then.
Even lower middle class people had a maid, and the only black people that I knew were
maids, and I knew something was wrong with that.
So I left my hedonistic lifestyle at the beach because there's a hedonistic side to me.
But there's also the good, the devil, and the angel, and I come from a family where
we try to look towards the angel side, the good side.
So I want to do something good, Charlie wanted to do something good, and so we were trying
to do something good.
The pictures were good.
That's all.
Only for that reason.
Now we have someone else who-
Yeah.
This is the little surprise-
Tell everyone about-
Who's going to join us.
Lois.
Where are you?
I'm here, sweetheart.
What are you doing?
What are you saying?
Down there, darling.
Yeah.
That's good.
Come on.
I found Lois right before Christmas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
And because Charlie and I had both forgotten the family name and the local newspaper that
published the story at the time didn't publish their names, and we don't know why.
We don't know why.
None of us know why.
The newspaper doesn't know why.
But anyway, 48 years go by, and Charlie and I both forgot the Liggins family name, so
the local newspaper helped us to find Lois and her family.
And my other son, Aaron, who's also a filmmaker, filmed this whole reunion in search to find
the family.
Because I knew I couldn't publish this book if I didn't find the family.
I had to find out who they were and reconnect with them.
Sure.
Lois, can you tell us what it was like to have him there?
So your memories, it's great to hear from you, in terms of what was that like?
He was living there for several weeks, right?
He did.
My mom really embraced David, and being that she did that, it allowed us, the seven kids,
to embrace him as well.
Quite honestly, David was a part of the family.
We treated him as family.
He slept over quite a few nights on our sofa.
One of the things I remember, David would call me, he would take us to the corner store
and buy us treats.
It really wasn't anything out of the norm for us.
He just fit in.
I don't know what more to say about that.
Well, thank you for allowing me in.
It was an incredible experience, because it was the first time that I had been outside
of my own family.
I mean, I'm in Virginia Beach, you're in Berkeley, 16 miles, but another world, right?
Another world.
I wanted to show people, and so it was, well, it was just nothing, I mean, we were having
fun.
We did.
We did.
Particularly, you were more up for having your picture taken than any of the other kids,
I think.
You're in your mouth.
See, she's the same.
Wait, I'm going to take another picture now.
Oh, I mean, nobody can't, you know, you guys talk for it, and Kathy asks her, wait, wait,
wait, wait.
Oh, no.
It really doesn't get any better than this, right?
Oh, I love it.
Wait a minute.
Lois, just wait a minute, because I regret it.
Wait a minute.
Got my Instagram feed to worry about.
Okay, thank you, darling.
I have to confess, that's why you're the photographer, and I'm not.
I brought my iPhone up to get the picture of you two hugging, and then I missed it.
I was like, have it out of my pocket in time.
Oh, well.
I have a question I would like to ask David.
Sure, please.
David, something I have often pondered
about what prompted you to do a re-edition of the book?
No, that's a really, really good question and I knew
that I had done something when I did it.
But again, I was, I mean, listen,
I had more opportunities than you did.
Obviously, I was a white middle class family.
But actually, technically, I was maybe even more poor
than you were, really.
I had a new baby, wife in graduate school.
I didn't have anything either.
But I absolutely had more opportunity.
And that was the whole point.
We, Charlie and I both hoped that by doing this in the first place
that we would be able to give something back,
the payback, pay-forward concept.
He had the same idea.
And you did.
And I did, but I wasn't able to really get it out there.
I went back to the University of Missouri grad school
and lost contact with you guys.
You guys didn't have a telephone.
There was no texting.
You and I text now, but we weren't texting then, right?
And there's the sofa, by the way.
And so I wasn't able to do with any degree of power what I wanted
to do with the book in the first place
and what Charlie wanted to do in the first place.
And so now I thought this is the perfect time for me to do this.
Those negatives have been moved dozens of times.
It's a miracle they still existed.
And I got them scanned and I started to think
about doing a layout, but I knew that I couldn't do it
if I didn't find you guys first.
I knew I couldn't just say, hey,
this is a photo project I did
and I don't remember their last name.
You got to be kidding.
I only actually remembered your name and James' name, Junior.
My oldest brother.
Your oldest brother.
I just, and I couldn't remember anything else.
Charlie couldn't remember anything else
and blessed the Virginia pilot for helping to find you.
But I thought now I would have an opportunity
to do something significant, pay back, pay forward,
like the original intent, only at least have the credibility
to do it, actually make it happen this time.
Yeah, that's great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's a little piece of history.
It's a little piece of history, right, darling?
I told you we're going to be nervous up here.
