#mainemedia

In 1996 I had done a Maine Photographic Workshop (now called the Maine Media Workshops) with a National Geographic photographer. I met the workshop founder David Lyman during my stay and got his email. I wanted to do the Mary Ellen Mark workshop down in Oaxaca the following year and said I could help out with my Spanish language skills. David told me to keep in touch and that I could work in exchange for the cost of the workshop in Mexico. I booked a plane ticket to San Antonio, took a bus the rest of the way down and arrived the morning of the workshop. David was there and I saw Mary Ellen and I announced that I was here to help. She knew nothing about it! It was eventually sorted out and I was the contact sheet printer for each student. I was enrolled in the workshop so I would meet with Mary Ellen in the morning to look over any images I had taken (printed myself the night before in the darkroom), go shoot during the day, come back later for talks and presentations, go to sleep, then wake up at midnight to print everyone’s contact sheets. Then I would walk home, go to sleep and do it all over again. The workshop lasted ten days, and I think the most valuable thing I learned from it was that a photographer should move their body and not just stand in one place shooting from the head. Look for more interesting vantage points. I also learned that if you wanted good portraits you had to connect with people not just point a camera at them.

Although I continued to shoot color slide film during the black and white workshop with MEM, the images below are ones I made before the workshop.  The first image is of a family friend who had moved to the town of San Miguel de Allende back in the 1920s and was one of the first americans to expatriate down there. He was somehow involved with setting up the art school in town. I photographed him in his garden where he grew a variety of orchids.

The next image is one I obviously shot at a bullfight. Although I went to one here and later one in Spain, I would not attend another one for moral reasons. This image won a photo contest at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Coincidentally, my grandfather (different last name) had been the Editor and President for many years before this happened.