The President's Coming! (Study in Pairs)

The President of the United States was visiting San Francisco, and

orders went out that both the President and his extensive press

corps could not be permitted to photograph the city's "skid row", so

police began a round up of the city's drunks and derelicts. From my

Black and White Portfolio II. Also see my Black and White Portfolio

I. Your ratings and critiques are most welcome. (If you rate

harshly or negatively, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment/Please share your superior knowledge to help advance my

photography.) Thanks and Enjoy ;~)) John.

nice shot, John. the two old men with their walking sticks in the back..

Just goes to show you, if you press the shutter enough, and look through the viewfinder with one eye, and keep the other one open, you can plan the placement of your shots -- and ALWAYS be aware of your backgrounds. Thanks for the nice comment, Balaji, I'm always glad to see a comment of yours on a photo of mine. John.

Balaji, apropos of backgrounds, you might want to search my folders for three nearly identical portraits of a man on a beach, fat and balding, and look at the backgrounds of each -- a young topless girl playing frisbee and compare how I tried to make the background make the portrait in each case -- one of my best critics who really liked one of those portraits even missed the point at first -- that it was the background and the playing girl that 'made' the photograph.

 

All planned deliberately, of course. Easy to do with a 'static' subject -- harder, much harder to do as in this case where the subjects were moving as they were. I look back and am amazed that I ever possessed such reflexes. John

You amaze me...I can't even begin to list the pairs! Heaven forfend I should miss the point entirely...I love the way the drunk's arms bisect the image...but my favorite pairings are the cops' faces, badges and hats....What year was this, please?

The year was 1969. Student rioters had shut down my school -- Columbia. I had been shot and recovered enough to ship out as a seaman to Viet-Nam where I separated and became a free lance photographer before being Medi-vacced back to the States. Once stateside and in good health (I actually was in good health before I left but the arrangements were unstoppable and it was post-TET--I covered riots at S.F. State free lance, then Berkeley, also freelance (People's Park), took a job as a securities trader on Montgomery Street, A.P. and UPI both gave me photographer job offers and I accepted the AP offer -- quit trading stocks -- and started the photographer job only to find there was no opening and they wanted me to write stories until the photographer 'opening' developed. I never wrote a story before, but my stories went nationwide and worldwide the second day and I never looked back, and took photos only on the side and as a so-called 'stringer' getting extra pay. I also later had two stock photo agencies repping me when AP sent me to New York City, one color and one black and white. I had a chance at General Manager of AP if I played politics and just stayed in NYC forever, but I quadrupled my salary in just one job change -- then law school. As it was at 23-1/2 I sat in on daily NY-WASH-CHICAGO bureau chief meetings for all of AP repping my department in place of my lazy boss. I left when the AP General Manager invited me to lunch and gave me my luncheon check to pay for myself. (CHEAP!). John.

Notice, they're quite different. I think one (right) is a motorcycle or squad car cop, the other, a beat cop????

that I am not quite as familiar with cops as YOU seem to be, John! That is a fascinating story about your background, much of which I remember from prior posts - but it is always good to get a refresher course...also for those of your audience who have not been following you as intently...

If anybody viewing is interested in why the 'low views' for this photo, Photo.Net was crashed and down during a substantial period this photo was on eligible as a "top photo" and thus didn't get a viewership.

Dear Mr Crosley, I would like to comment in order to leave a trace of my viewing and appreciation of your work (past and present).

I must also say that your title is amusing and frightening. 1969 ?

I like the precision of your positioning of the hand s and arms of the drunken person.

You have a nice sence of Timing. The timing of an instant in 1969 , immortalized in this photo. 1969 and yet nothing has really changed perhaps except the uniforms. This is the feeling I get from your nice picture and so many to come.

A very esthetic view of a very pathetic moment, don't you think?

Thank you for the nice comment. Yes, 1969. The drunks now legally can panhandle (the fancy term for 'beg',) without fear of arrest, and they carry signs, from 'will work for food' followed by false piety 'God bless!' which is never truly meant and is mere advertising --- to the shock sign "Help me, I need a drink" (or "A Beer").

 

San Francisco still has one of the largest homeless populations, and many of them resist taking their medications and/or going into shelters, and it's a major political problem without solution.

 

One reason: San Francisco is a city of renters who vote, and as a result it has rent control and a vast legal system devoted just to the control of how much tenants can pay and how much landlords can raise rents (or not), and whether or not tenants can be evicted.

 

The result is a city full of voters who believe in state intervention for their own well-being and who are VERY LIBERAL in their politics and about state intervention in their personal affairs and the affairs of others -- and who are most tolerant of the feces-strewing, urine-streaming drunks and panhandlers who bother pedestrians and deface merchants' doorways.

 

In the face of that, the mayors and politicians heretofore have lacked the political will to do more than move the drunks (and now drug abusers and mentally ill) from place to place.

 

So, I guess this photo, is both timeless and therefore emblematic of the city's endemic homelessness problem.

 

And the drunks/mentally ill/drug abusers/bumshes (Russian for bums) survive because of the fair climate and semi-tolerant attitude of the citizen-voters and their elected politicians.

 

On a personal note, Frederic, I am extremely pleased by your comment.

 

My commentator Pogue suggests that vox populi = vox stupidity but the number of literate, highly educated and even sometimes literary comments I get under these and other photos of mine suggests otherwise -- at least in this small neck of the woods.

 

I attempt to make my comments as inviting as the photos they underline and underscore; because as artist/photographers/conneuseurs of good photography, few of us talk or write about the process of making photographs -- in part because so many photographers are (unlike Cartier-Bresson) not highly skilled with language, or (in the case of PN here) many are foreign-born and not skilled highly in English.

 

You are always welcome in my portfolio and folders, and free to rate and comment as you please and to rate high or low without offense, as I know the source, and when criticism and judgment comes from a good heart and place without malice it is most welcome.

 

Encore, merci beaucoup, respectueusement, monsieur.

 

John

This may be a 'study in pairs' but it also contains 'threes' -- note the cops and their dragee.' John ;-))

Outstanding piece of documentary! I love the apparent indifferent look of those two old guys on the back. I wonder what was the destiny of all the characters of this photo today, 36 years after... Best regards, Alex

Alex, I'll bet at least three of the 'actors' are dead, especially the foreground drunk, probably soon afterward, despite an apparent young age, and the older guys, background long ago pushed up daisies. Even the cops, probably are dead. Me, I hope to push up daisies a very, very long time from now, as I'm having lots of fun taking more and more photos day by day, including one of the 'Doobie Brothers' last night over pizza (a guitarist who looks all strung out from years of who knows what hard stuff and smellls a little, but his friends say he plays for the Doobie Brothers, go figure and watch for his photo(s) -- some of my best.

 

John (Crosley)