1956

The Fat One, Antoine Domino, released Blueberry Hill and I became an instant romantic and life long Rock and Roll devotee in second grade. It was preceded by Ain’t That a Shame (1955) and followed by Blue Monday the same year, although I didn’t notice the latter two until the shock of the former had subsided somewhat. I was hooked.

1957

A warm spring afternoon, I was summoned to the principal’s office and sent home. I walked the seven and one half blocks alone like I did twice everyday wondering why I was asked to go home because school would be out for the day in a couple of hours. What’s a couple of hours, something must be really wrong. I was right, it was really wrong. My mother was standing in the living room next to a suitcase. In an instant, my life changed forever.
I was 9. Divorce was unheard of in those days. From that time I had no fixed home, living with each of them in turn, then relatives, then back into the rotation. I was very popular.
This experience was rife with new information and the values my mother instilled in my brain and backside would serve me well.

Solo Sojourns

I made several 1000 mile train and bus trips on my own to stay with relatives from the late 1950’s through the early 1960’s. I had occasion to lay over in Memphis once, in those years just before the freedom riders, before the (Birmingham) 16th Street Baptist Church bombings and before Selma. I was 10 and not particularly worldly. I had seen black people before but didn’t make much of it one way or the other. There was one black family in the small, rural Kansas town where I was born. The children and I played together and their father taught me a lot about baseball and about people. It was very different in Memphis on that day. I walked about the town, sight-seeing, mindful of where the bus station was so I wouldn’t get lost. Old black men stepped off the side walk into the street to let me pass. Not one but every one. I thought maybe they somehow knew I was not from around there and they didn’t like outsiders.
In Birmingham I noticed the signs on the rest rooms, “White” and “Colored”. Well, I had only seen white bathrooms all of my short life. I went into the “Colored” restroom to see what color the sinks and toilets were. All the men in there looked at me in a strange, pensive way and said nothing.

Montgomery - Three Years After Rosa Parks

I returned to the bus and sat in the back because that was where all the people were. The driver told me I had to sit in the front of the bus. I figured it must be to keep little kids like me from bothering grown ups.
In Montgomery it all became clear to me. I went into the colored restroom once again thinking the previous ones that had all white sinks and toilets were a fluke. This one surely had pastel colored fixtures or, maybe a black toilet with red flame decals. Another disappointment. This one looked just like the others. Dinghy white and unremarkable save for the gentleman who asked me very politely to leave. I asked him why I had to leave. He was very frightened and explained “If anyone sees you in here, we’ll be in a lot of trouble. I noticed that once again, all the men in there were black. Not a coincidence.

Clarity

In that moment I realized what my mother was trying to teach me: A person’s dignity is everything, and to be nice to everyone regardless of their bathroom color.

Seeing

My dad taught me how cameras and light work with film and how to develop and print it. In my early twenties I gave up the Kodak Instamatic and bought a 35 mm Pentax Spotmatic f like his. He told me that more and better equipment does not make one a better photographer. I knew he was right of course and, years later, reflecting on this premise, I would finally take it to heart. Although getting more stuff doesn’t make you necessarily better, acquiring it is half the game. I still have my Pentax (and the Instamatic). And now, 35 years later, I have learned to see what is all around each of us, everyday, if we look. Expressing that with photographs takes little skill, technical expertise or equipment. Point taken dad.

Summer, 1967

Summer of Love, I would not hear that term until later, but it was, for me too. And, of love lost.

“Sea of heartbreak, lost love and loneliness…….” – Don Gibson recording, 1961

November 11, 1967 - The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)

Well, it wasn’t really, more like a Saturday, Veteran’s Day to be precise, in those days before all holidays were on Mondays. We always bought poppies. But this was a very significant date. I would find out why from my friend J.B. who also showed me a whole ‘nother way of looking at things.

September 30, 1968 – Monday

My classmate is forever 19. I didn’t know him well. In fact I think he was slow and made fun of in high school. When I saw his headstone decades later while visiting my father’s grave nearby, I was saddened to learn he had died in a far away place only a few months after arriving and probably alone in the mud with no family. I reflected on my own life experience between 1968 and that day in the mid 1980s. But mostly I regretted deeply any un-kindness by me during the brief time we attended school and played football together.

July 31, 1976 – Late Saturday Afternoon
 
I could see the black sky go on forever from my mountain home 8600 feet above sea level and high above Boulder Canyon in Colorado. A massive thunderstorm stalled over the Big Thompson River drainage between Loveland and Estes Park, a few miles from my front porch. The rain brought a wall of water, 20 feet high in places. Homes, businesses and 139 lives were lost. Six more people were never found.

There was a lot of news coverage for weeks afterward. I remember a first person account describing propane tanks, dislodged from their foundations by the water, racing on top of it down the canyon exploding one after another as they collided with the canyon walls.

A police officer raced his patrol car up the canyon to what he must have known was certain death in an attempt to warn the unsuspecting vacationers. He lost his life in that valiant effort as did a family from my home town in Kansas who were vacationing in the area.

I worked with Jim on a pipeline project in the late 1960s. He and wife Phyllis were in their early forties. Brenda Sue died with them that day, the day before her 16th birthday. Ironically, her sister’s birthday was the next day also. Debra Gaye would have turned 14 on that tomorrow that never came for them.

February 25, 2006 – Saturday Afternoon

My three seconds with the world’s most famous adult film star and what I did with the extra time.
My friend and model Alisa introduced me to the star’s publicist who in turn brought Jenna to me at an event we were attending. She was in my presence for three seconds and I used one of those to make this shot. The other two seconds were utilized by me to ask if she was Jenna Jameson to which she answered in the affirmative with a mute nod and a quizzical look. I felt as though I had just asked the President of the United States or Michael Jordan who they were. The last second was an awkward silence that ended with her exiting the scene and me wondering what had just happened.
She was very gracious and Bradley, her publicist and my new friend, came back later and said she was available for another quick shot with some of my model friends. This lasted another twenty or thirty seconds. Bradley told me to do what ever I wanted with the images and I appreciate that…….here is another.
Ron Jeremy was there as well and I have the evidence, you just don’t want to know.

December 18, 2006 – Monday morning

Ruth Bernhard died today. The legendary San Francisco photographer is dead at 101. Born in 1905 to a famed poster artist she was raised in Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1929. She became involved in the lesbian sub-culture of the artistic community in New York where she was a successful commercial photographer. Bernhard became friends with photographer Bernice Abbott and her lover, critic Elizabeth McCausland. By 1934 she was almost exclusively photographing women in the nude (In the Box, Horizontal, 1962), for which she is best known. She is also known for her lesbian themed works (Two Forms, 1962).

A chance meeting with Edward Weston on a Santa Monica beach in 1935 changed her life and her art. "I understood the craft of photography when done by an artist is art.''

Bernhard was a friend and colleague of Imogen Cunningham, Dorthea Lange, A.A. and Weston who remained her friend and mentor for many years. She left behind a marvelous body of work and many photographers who were inspired by her work, as she was by Weston’s.

December 22, 2006 – Friday evening

Edward Weston (1886-1958) made his last photograph at Point Lobos in 1948, the year I was born. The ravages of Parkinson’s had taken their toll. He is generally considered one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century, if not the most. He interpreted the everyday as erotic, even vegetables (Pepper #30, 1930). He was a great influence on my father’s work. I met Edward’s grandson Kim at a workshop in Boulder, Colorado in April, 2005. We spent two days photographing nudes at Rob Taylor’s studio with Kim’s 8 X 10 Arca – Swiss camera. My dad would have been very pleased.

There were other notables of the early part of the last century who were important in making photography an accepted art form.
Among them were Tina Modotti, Alfred Steiglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe (23 years his junior) who was a brilliant painter and Steiglitz’ muse, model and lover as Modotti was to Weston.

These people are as important for their ideas and actions as they are for the actual work they produced.

Modotti (Niña con cubeta – 1926) a.k.a. the radical beauty, was an Italian born communist and revolutionary who spent a lot of time in Mexico, much of it with Weston while they were married to other people. She died under mysterious circumstances at a young age yet left behind a significant body of work.

Steiglitz (The Steerage – 1907) made the art world recognize photography as an art form as distinguished from a purely mechanical function. He brought people like O’Keeffe (Iris – 1929) and European artists including French sculptor Auguste Rodin (The Thinker, 1904) to his Gallery 291 in New York City.

Dorthea Lange (White Angel Breadline – 1932, Migrant Mother – 1935) who documented the daily lives of depression era migrant workers and their families. Imogen Cunningham who was one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century was renowned for her botanicals (Magnolia Blossom – 1925) and later became interested in the human form (Triangles – 1928, Frida Kahlo Painter 2 – 1931). She was a co-founder (along with Weston and A.A.) of Group f/64 which endeavored to define photography in its purest sense and as an art form as did Steiglitz through his Photo Secession group and the publication Camera Work which he also co-founded.

Appalachia

Contemporary photographer Shelby Lee Adams b. 1950, (Brothers Praying – 1993) has documented the lives of the people of his home state of Kentucky for over three decades. Some are friends, some are relatives. Adams's previous books Appalachian Portraits (1993) and Appalachian Legacy (1998) both by University Press of Mississippi, established the grace, intelligence, and with which Adams depicts life, as well as the candor and straightforward honesty he evokes from his trusting subjects. (University Press of Mississippi)

I didn’t know the Currence families I descended from who settled along Whippoorwill Creek in Logan County a few miles West of Adam’s home in Hazard, Kentucky.
His photographs give me an insight into the rich cultural history of the region and into what kinds of people my ancestors must have been.

February 7, 2007 – Wednesday, the wee hours

With that special day just a week away, I endeavor to put in verse what I cannot say…… to her. (with nods to Poe)

Another Valentine

Verse is only words I fear
Fixed in the being of the maker
Living in hope someone will hear
Living and seeking a taker

Both alive and alone are the words in my head
Looking for you far and near
Always living never dead
It is time to say it clear

I been loving you since my prime
Always forgetting you are not mine
Time to say this is for you Valentine

-Barry Dale Currence, February 2007

Mirror of Life

Before you I must go
Taking my time going slow
Arriving this day or the next
Mirror of life in the text

Weary and restless of body and being
Now sadness gives way to sorrow
For as day turns to night
And when looking becomes seeing
I have hope for a better tomorrow

-Barry Dale Currence, February 2007

 

August 14, 2007

Happy birthday (1910) Willy Ronis. Willy is a French photographer who was inspired by Alfred Steiglitz and A.A. to leave his late father’s portrait studio and take his photography in another direction in 1949. Willy was the first French photographer to work for Life Magazine. He is well known for the nude portrait of his wife, Anne Marie:Le Nu Provencal, 1949. He photographed her again years later as she suffered the effects of Alzheimer’s. She died in 1991.
As a beginning collector of fine art black and white photographs, I purchased Willy’s Rue Rambuteau, Paris 1946 for $1500 in 2000 from the Photogenesis Gallery in La Fonda hotel on San Francisco street in Santa Fe. My next addition was Outside the Moulin Rouge, Paris, 2000 from my good friend and colleague, Chad Follmar.

August 27, 2007

I had never heard of Stevie Ray Vaughn (1954-1990) when he died in a helicopter crash 17 years ago. I never heard or thought of him again until sometime much later when I tuned into a rebroadcast of Austin City Limits and saw him perform Pride  and Joy, 1983. The sashed tunic, the neck wear, the hats (not so fond of the plumage) the bracelets, Crown Royal and the behind the back guitar picking...........

Wheels came up and right back down
Leaving the world this fateful day
Scattered ashes all around
Of the band and Stevie Ray

Barry Dale Currence August 27, 2007

October 30, 2007 - Tuesday Evening
University of Colorado at Boulder, the Glenn Miller Ballroom in the UMC.

Twisted Fairy Tales Drag Show: Fallen Divas

Oh, he would have loved this. The show went on underneath a huge portrait of the famed tromboner, in the ballroom named in his honor. My friend Kaela, who organized this event for the CU Gay - Straight Alliance, invited me to photograph their performance. It was a wonderful evening of men dressed as girls, girls dressed as men dressed as girls and everything in between. Kaela did an outstanding job organizing and producing the show as well as performing in it.Tegan, Kaela, Heather, Countess DaVina and everyone involved were wonderful to me. The 800-1000 people in attendance and I loved every minute of it.

Admission was free, young men at each entrance were passing out party favors..Ah, youth.

September 13, 2007 – Thursday, 12:33 am

In the Classic Cameras forum on photo.net, someone asked the question “What 10 things do you think about photography?” There were some very interesting responses. Here are mine in no particular order:

• My 1970 Pentax Spotmatic f is (still) capable of anything that I am.
• Buying the Nikons was fun but un-necessary.
• I am pleased when someone looks at one of my images for longer than it takes to pass by it.
• My father taught me how light works with film and how to get it there. A painter may have more or less technical skill and achieve a similar result. Both mediums first require the art of seeing which, to me, is as emotional as it is visual.
• A photograph stops time, tells a story and expresses emotions that are singular regardless of how many still photographers, videographers or artists are present. Each will see and feel the event from a very unique perspective and point of view. I can, anywhere on the planet, anytime, with anyone or with no one; see, feel and produce something that no one else can, ever. Wow.
• Alfred Stieglitz was right. Photography is art.
• Digital photography has hurt me by diluting the art, putting cameras in phones, key chains, cheap images on the internet, et cetera, et cetera.
• Digital photography has helped me immensely by letting me to see what I have just done, before proceeding, allowing me to shoot more images without wasting film and allowing me to see what others are doing and thinking by use of the internet.
• Photography has given me pause in the blur of motion that is daily life.

April 1, 2008

“You want to learn how to photograph the landscape? Learn how to photograph a face. If you can understand the composition of a face…trees are easy.”
-William Corey
June 13, 1949 – April 1, 2008

It was my good fortune to know William briefly, in better times, before cancer took
him at 58. He was a Boulder (Colorado) photographer who enjoyed world wide
acclaim for his Ultra Large Format (8 X 20 inch negative) color photographs of
Japanese gardens. I have seen these images enlarged to 4 X 5 feet...Stunning.

William was also an accomplished portrait photographer which is how I got to
know him.

His magnificent body of work and an insight into his life experience can be
found at www.williamcorey.com

September 12, 2009
"I never took a mean photo," he told The Associated Press in 2005. "I never wanted to make people look ridiculous. I always had a lot of respect for the people I photographed."

--WIlly Ronis
August 14, 1910 – September 12, 2009

 

August 02, 2010 - Monday

The Last Love Letter

Lovely Miss T., when I told you I love you, you said you love me too

When I said I want us to be a couple in a committed relationship, you said we are

When we discovered I have diabetes, you said we’ll handle it

When I was diagnosed with cancer, you said we’ll manage

With you, I could have gotten through anything

These are some of the reasons I love you so much and am lost without you

And, you have a kind heart

Where have you gone

October 14, 2010 - Thursday

Wayne has gone away, alone and conflicted
Wayne has gone today, self inflicted

There were some to offer comfort and kindness
And some were those
Who can only offer prose

You have run the last race
Go with your god
Go with grace

October 19, 2010 - Tuesday
To Nancy:

I imagine each day of my life as a stepping stone across a stream
I just try to get from one to the next any way I can without falling in

Sometimes I cannot find a reason to attempt the next step
Sometimes I wobble

Sometimes I slip
Sometimes I am afraid of what is on the other side