Senior portraits

A little over five years ago I had just had my first and only photography exhibit at a gallery in Portland when I got a call from the publisher of a senior newspaper based out of Keizer, Oregon. She was looking for a new photographer to take portraits of the senior citizens, baby boomers and others profiled in the paper. Someone had reccommended me to the publisher, which I've never understood. After all, the review of my show in The Oregonian (pre-dating my being a visual arts reviewer there) made special note that there wasn't a single human being in any of the 25 photographs on display.

I took my first portraits for the paper that month. I didn't like having to drive all over the metro area to meet up with the subjects. And as I'd appear for the assignment with a tiny pocket-sized digital camera with no lighting equipment, I felt silly having to explain to the subjects that I wasn't really a professional photographer.

Even so, taking portraits for Northwest Senior News afforded me the chance to focus on portraiture (if you'll pardon the pun) in a way I never had before. I'd always wanted to take pictures of my friends and family and explore the challenges of capturing people in a flattering way, but usually resisted out of shyness. My sister Sara is the only person I've ever taken a lot of pictures of. Now, suddenly, I had people expecting to sit down with me and pose for as long as I wanted.

Many of the subjects turned out to be fascinating as well. Initially I was a bit arrogant about the journalistic content of a regional senior citizen newspaper. But they did their homework and found lots of worthy people to profile, and I relished taking their picture.

One of the first people I photographed, for example, was a longtime antiwar activist who had co-founded the Oregon Peace Institute with Elizabeth Furse, the Oregon Congresswoman in whose US Capitol office I interned in 1993. Another guy was a volunteer for Northwest Medical Teams and, once I found his house way out in Clackamas, told me stories about going to Third-World countries all over the globe.

A favorite portrait of mine was of this woman; her name I can't remember, but she is the co-owner of Flying M Ranch in Yamhill County. Growing up there, my family often headed for this rural restaurant and horse stables.

Like many, she was uncomfortable about having her picture taken, but unlike most she wasn't nervous. Beside the corduroy shirt and old-school beehive hairdo, I like her sense of disinterested self confidence in the picture. It practically feels implied that she'd call anyone "Hun". I decided not to tell her, though, of the raucous all night kegger some friends and I threw at one of Flying M's cabins to celebrate high school graduation back in 1990. Or how one of the windows was damaged when a party crasher tried to steal our keg. 

Another favorite, both in terms of the picture and the personality of the subjects, was this husband and wife from Vancouver: Jim and Tonnie.

The two regularly and proudly celebrate their Norwegian heritage, not by wearing Viking horns or inventing new and better cell phones, but by regularly dancing in the Norse Runderdanske troupe of traditional Norwegian dancers at a local church. The couple possessed not an ounce of self-consciousness when they agreed to meet me at their home in full dance costume. Jim even gave me a copy of some of their Norwegian music when I half-jokingly told him it'd make a good soundtrack for one of my short films.

Often there seem to quietly be people moving to Portland to retire from other places on the west coast, particularly California. This man I photographed in his new condo, whose name I believe was Walt, had been a TV producer and screenwriter. As we talked, he showed me a couple of his old TV screenplays. He wasn't an arrogant guy at all, but I could tell he enjoyed showing me the fruits of his labor in that galley-bound screenplay on his bookshelf. After all, as much as I long for time off, it must be hard to give up your life's calling one day, move to a condo in Portland, and have very little to do.  I'm not usually one to frequent senior centers or do a lot to reach out to others who used to be in interesting businesses, but I could have sat with Walt for hours and listened to stories about the golden age of television. I also loved the guy's ascot.

One afternoon I was also sent to a community center in Multnomah Village to take pictures of three retired magicians. The backdrop didn't offer much: just a middling interior with offices and meeting spaces. But luckily these guys each brought a magician's prop of some sort. The guy pictured here, whose name I believe was Duane, had a perfectly debonair marriage of a floral bouquet pulled from out of his sleeve and a suit to go with it. I love old men in suits, by the way, especially when they're worn by men who didn't necessarily dress so formally in their earlier years, like Allen Ginsberg.

The reason I'm writing about these photographs now is that after five years I've decided to finally give up my monthly photography gig with the paper. Lately it's felt like every photo assignment I go to is rushed: speeding there to make the appointment, trying to get the shots without dragging the subject through tons of angles, trying to Photoshop a bad photo into being a serviceable one. Even so, I cherish the time I had taking the pictures, and if Trude were to call me in a jam, with some octogenarian ready for his or her close up and nobody to take the shot, it's not out of the question that I'd reach for my camera again.