Love Always

High school graduation day in 1978 -- I'm the one with the diploma. (Photo by R. Bruce Cameron)

Because I am obsessed with the inexorable march of time and anniversaries of various and sundry rites of passage, I was quick to remember that yesterday, June 18, marked the 35th anniversary of my graduation from high school.

I'd hastily add that photographers, by the very nature of our work, are constantly reviewing -- not to say living in the past. The moment we make a photograph, we begin looking back in time as we prepare it for publication. Over the course of a career, we seem to look further and further back through the years.

So, on the occasion of this momentous date, I rifled through my black and white negatives and found pictures of senior week at [Suburban NJ High]. And then, because 35 years later, I could not remember some of the names of my classmates, I went back to our yearbook, its cover depicting a huge rainbow over a bucolic landscape that in no way resembled our town, still in its plastic slipcover, like Grandma's sofa cushions.

Parenthetical aside: do high school or college students still get yearbooks? Do they exist in this digital, put-everything-on-my-smartphone, paper-less age? What mementos of their high school years do kids inscribe for their classmates to acknowledge their journey through puberty?

Because, once I began delving into the pages of the Class of 1978, I had to stop to re-read the writings of my classmates -- boys scribbling brief, desultory messages in wild cursive, right across their black & white portraits; girls in neat, controlled handwriting, carefully framing their faces with long, thoughtful, vaguely grateful missives. ("It was fantastic getting to know you these past few months.")

On first glance, I was reminded of my own kindness, funniness, buffoonery, what a great listener I am (not to say, solicitous) -- or so these people said. Alas, poor Ross, we hardly knew ye -- but you really lightened up Advanced Biology class. Some were more honest than others: I was, at best, a class clown; at worst, a classroom disruption.

Maybe I've just always been a cynic. It's possible. There are a lot of them in my business -- it's an occupational hazard.

But the more lasting image was one of youthful innocence, that, with the benefit of 35 years of hindsight, seems almost hilarious in its naivete. "Love always," ended so many notes from girls I barely knew then. I'm not suggesting that these people were insincere, only that these rituals -- graduations, yearbooks, reunions, and the like -- trigger in us an almost knee-jerk response, in which we become overly effusive.

Yet, as I reviewed these writings that I hadn't really thought about for several decades, I quickly found the ones that touched me most -- then and now.

"Pup," read one from a male classmate, referring to me by my club softball nickname, "Love ya! D.B." Then he penned a cryptic postscript: "'Miles long'." Sophomoric penis humor, or something else? I never asked.

The other, from a girl who has since died, read, "Dear Ross -- Simply -- all my love. Underneath the urbane wittiness, you're a sweet guy."

It's safe to say that I am not now, nor have I ever been, urbane, much less witty, but I have always loved that she thought so, or at least pretended to. Sadly, later, when I was commuting into New York City in the 1980s, I would occasionally see her on the train. I tried to catch her eye, to say hi, but she invariably looked away. I'd say that she didn't recognize me, but it's more likely she just had grown into another place, with no time for the "urbane wittiness" (or witlessness). And I was still too awkward to approach her.

The awkwardness of high school is a time-honored conceit, but the truth is that most of us never outgrow our awkwardness, it just assumes new forms. The inability to get the job/partner/salary/lifestyle we really want, it's all just an extension of not feeling comfortable with one's self.

And that's probably, in the end, the real reason for my wistfulness over this 35-year anniversary; that, even now, I'm not really completely comfortable in my own skin.

But at least I'm a nice guy. Just ask my classmates.

Vaya con Dios, Tia Caroline

Caroline Hendrickson in 2008; Oakland, Calif.

I’ve been ruminating today over the life and times of my aunt Caroline Hendrickson, who died over the weekend. She was 90, and lived alone in Gettysburg, Pa., where both she and her husband, the late Tom Hendrickson, had taught at, and retired from, Gettysburg College.

I wrote recently about grief and photojournalism; it seems that ever since life has been presenting me with ironic rejoinders to same – bombings in Boston, the deaths of two former colleagues, and the passing of familiar “old friends,” but nothing puts an exclamation point on these things like a death in the family.

There will be no obituary for her in The New York Times, or the Washington Post, or even El Pais, the papers she read daily, but Caroline was a fiercely independent woman who struck out on her own in an era when women were expected to be docile domestics. She married a man of whom her mother clearly did not approve. She attained the highest levels of professional standing in a field that was dominated by men and hostile to women.

She traveled to at least five of the seven continents, spoke at least three languages fluently, lived in pre-World War II Germany and post-WWII Europe and championed civil rights long before it was fashionable in this country.

Likewise, she believed in being physically fit – until problems with her neck got the better of her, her daily routine included a bicycle ride around the nearby Gettysburg National Military Park. She loved tennis: playing and, later, watching.

She taught me, probably more than anyone else in my family, about the importance of tolerance and acceptance of those who are different from us; she would not be cowed by the (often strident) opinions of her family and friends. My own admittedly liberal viewpoints have been greatly shaped by her world outlook.

She (and Tom) were generous to a fault – it’s fair to say that, without her support, I would not have my home here in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country.

Unfortunately, living 2,900 miles away made our visits together infrequent – I last saw her in the summer of 2011. Technology was not her forte: she did not friend me on Facebook, nor did she check her e-mail daily, much to my chagrin. Anyone in my family will tell you I’m an underachiever in the correspondence department – even more so where the U.S. Postal Service is involved. I hope she knew when she left us how much I cared for her, the dearth of letters and phone calls notwithstanding.

Caroline was not a religious woman, so I doubt she gave a lot of thought to the afterlife; I was surprised when we actually had a church funeral service for Tom. But wherever she has gone, I pray that she will meet up again with her husband, and that they will share a toast with a glass of good tequila and some Mexican dishes with lots of garlic.

Rest in Peace, Caroline.

Snapshots: Photojournalism and Grief

We newspaper photographers like to talk – about challenges of coverage, memorable mistakes, great shots that got away, about each other – and it was in the course of one of those meandering discussions the other night that I got to thinking again about the tragedies of life and how we, as journalists, are called upon to intrude upon people’s most terrible pain to ask that time-honored question, “So, how does that make you feel?”

Lance Iverson, my colleague from the San Francisco Chronicle, mentioned that perhaps his absolute least favorite part of the job was walking into the living room of a family whose child had just been killed by gun violence. We all agreed that was a miserable short straw to get, but it started an inner conversation for me: why is it that, as journalists, people – viewers, readers, editors, other reporters – expect that we will track down the survivors of some horrible conflagration and make them recount it in minute detail? And right now, before the dust has settled?

Somewhere in the back of our heads we all know why it is that we are so fascinated by death: because sooner or later, one way or another, that same fate awaits us all, every one; the only questions to be answered are how, when, and in what manner will we draw our last breath here? Sure, it's morbid, but we all know that person who wants to be the first to tell you about the famous person who just died. Because then we can all intone our regrets, while at the same time thinking, "Thank God that's not me."

 In 28 years of covering the news, I’ve been spared the horror of a Columbine, but I’ve been to plenty of traffic fatalities, fatal fires, shootings and homicide scenes and the fact is that it never really gets easier. But as time has gone on, I’ve become inured to a lot of the emotions that overwhelmed me when I got my first press card in 1985. And that’s the nub of the issue: how to make images that will move our readers when we are so jaded as to no longer feel shocked, or angry, or aggrieved?

Forget the fact that at this point media coverage of high-profile crimes is so overblown as to invite parody – it’s been 25 years since Don Henley famously lampooned the new industry’s fixation on the tragic. Or that the world is awash in images of war, terror, natural disaster and disease, on a scale unseen in human history – the same Internet that makes it possible for me to present you with this plodding mini-thesis also makes it possible to see scores of images of a nature you would never see on your television or in your daily newspaper.

Yes, I've been thinking lately that a lot of life seems to be about grief -- the loss of family, friends, pets, even inanimate objects like one's favorite TV show or a shirt that wears out from repeated wearings. It turns out, after all this talk, that I don't really have any deep insight on the subject, other than to say that it occurs to me that life has a way of beating the optimist out of us.