Pictures I Like: “Mary Greyeyes”, photographer unknown 1942

The Story: This photo is in the Library and Archives of Canada with the following untrue caption: “Mary Greyeyes being blessed by her native Chief prior to leaving for service in the CWAC ”. Other places have Mary as an “Indian princess” being blessed by her father and chief. Also untrue.

The Facts: Here is the true story as related by her daughter-in-law, Melanie Fahlman Reid. Mary Greyeyes, aka Mary Reid, enlisted in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps  in 1942. Her brother David had joined the Army not long before, so Mary decided to give it a go as well. She was living on the Cree reserve at Muskeg Lake, north of Saskatoon, at the time. She wrote to the War Department and eventually got a letter telling her to travel to Regina and take a test. Mary had gone to a residential school and, in those days, there was no education for Indians beyond Grade 8, so she was apprehensive. But she passed with flying colors and became the first native to join the Canadian Women’s Army Corps.

Lt. David Greyeyes, 1943. [Department of National Defence]

The white women didn’t want her in the barracks and so Mary boarded outside the barracks. One day, her sergeant and two Mounties came by the boarding house and told Mary that, if she came with them and had her picture taken, they would give her a new uniform and a really good lunch. So they drove out to the Piapot Reserve, which is northeast of Regina, and there Mary knelt in the grass before band councillor (later chief) Harry Bull and had her picture taken. She remembered that there were a lot of bugs in the grass and it was uncomfortable. She and Harry had a conversation:

Harry says, “God it’s hot. What did you get for this?”
Mary says, “I get a good lunch.”
Harry says, “I got 20 bucks.”
Mary says, “So what are you bitching about? You get 20 bucks and I’m down here with bugs.”

Harry was a World War I vet and probably the original notion was to show an elder blessing the youth going to war or some such. The photographer went to local houses and found some stuff — pipe, bonnet, blanket, a knot of sweetgrass –that was cobbled together into a costume for Harry. He wasn’t Mary’s chief — they’d never met — and she wasn’t an Indian princess, whatever that was supposed to be.

Anyway, after the picture was taken, Mary was shipped out to England where she mostly worked in a laundry, which she hated. She asked for a transfer and her sergeant wrote on her application “Does Not Speak English”. But she did get reassigned to a kitchen. Whenever there was a need for a bit of colonial color to brighten up the news, they called on Mary who became “The Indian”. “She’s A Full-Blooded Indian But Now She Cooks For Palefaces” was one headline. It wasn’t all bad. She met Princess Elizabeth and the Queen Mother and sometimes enjoyed her status. Later she said that these were some of the best years of her life.

In 1946, Mary shipped back to Canada and was discharged. She returned to the Muskeg Lake reserve. One day, during a federal election, her old sergeant and a couple of Mounties showed up. They said, “Mary, you’ve got to come and vote.” The deal was, Indians who had served in the war could vote, if they gave up their treaty rights:

So Mary says to them, she says, “Can my mom vote?”
And they said, “No, she didn’t fight in the war.”
She said, “Well, what about my cousins over there, can they vote?”
And they said no. They said, “C’mon Mary, you gotta come, we’ve got the photographer.”
And she said, “All those years, I said nothing. Now I’m saying no.”

And that’s the real story of Mary Greyeyes.

[for a more complete version of the above, see Melanie Fahlman Reid's account in The Tyee]

Pictures I Like: Diane Arbus, “Xmas Tree In A Living Room In Levittown, Long Island, 1963″

My Story:

“Here it is, the most beautiful tree on the lot. Cost me $18, but what the hell it goes to a good cause. At least I think it does. Depends on what the firemen do with it. Probably buy booze for themselves. So what! I got the tree, the best tree. Just have to get this damned stand screwed on, Fill the thing with water later so the tree won’t dry out so fast and shed needles all over the rug. Love that evergreen smell! Okay, upsy-daisy. Jesus, this thing’s heavy. Move the stand over. Try again. Stand up goddamit! Jesus, it’s too tall! Oh hell it’s falling over. Christ! My back! Okay, okay. It’s still a beautiful tree, nice shape, I’ll just trim a little off the top. Get the fucking saw. Where did I leave it? Out in the shed. There it is, under the lawnmower. Okay, back inside. God, my back! Okay, saw off a little. Now heave the damn thing… Still too tall goddamit! Okay, okay. Saw off a little more. And up… Just fits! Ha! Got you you bastard! Okay, no angel on top this year but put the damn presents around and who gives a shit. My back! Every step is agony! I need a drink a really really stiff drink. The most beautiful drink in the house.”

The Facts:

Diane Arbus got a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on a project called “American Rites, Manners and Customs” that she completed in 1963. This photograph was made during the end of that project as she was perfecting her head-on square format style. Arbus’ work is often called strange or freakish but it is really just ordinary life in photographs — trees like this one are the subjects of millions of family snapshots — the problem is that people don’t recognize just how strange the ordinary actually is.

“…if you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic. You know it really is fantastic that we look like this and you sometimes see that very clearly in a photograph. Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it.”
(Diane Arbus quoted in the 1972 Aperture monograph Diane Arbus published shortly after her death. New edition which may or may not include this quote: Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph: Fortieth-Anniversary Edition)

Pictures I Like: The Jap Skull

My Story: Well, maybe I don’t like this picture so much as I am compelled to think about it. From a 1944 issue of Life magazine, the “Picture of the Week”. Here’s the caption:

When he said goodby two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Ariz., a big, handsome Navy Lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week, Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends, and inscribed: “This is a good Jap – a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach.” Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo. The armed forces disapprove strongly of this kind of thing.

But Natalie doesn’t show any sign of disapproval. I wonder what is going through her head.

The Facts: The armed forces definitely did not approve of “this kind of thing” and on several occasions warned US publishers that printing such pictures might result in retaliation against American soldiers. Nevertheless, the practice of taking skulls and other parts of corpses as souvenirs was widespread in the Pacific theater during World War II. A contemporary poem, “The US Sailor with the Japanese Skull”, by Winfield Townley Scott, actually detailed one method of cleaning a souvenir skull. Other methods were practiced by US servicemen.

Marines “stewing a skull”. [Wikipedia]

At one point President Roosevelt was presented with a letter opener made from a man’s arm. He is said to have received it warmly but to have had the item interred with other remains later. That story and the photo of Natalie and Tojo found their  way into the Japanese press. Some historians have claimed that stories of US soldiers desecrating remains helped cause the mass suicide of civilians who leaped into the sea at Saipan and Okinawa. After the war, as Japan became a trusted US ally, souvenir body parts ceased to be respectable conversation pieces and were quietly put away. Sometimes they re-emerge to the consternation of police who have to determine their origin.

But the question remains, what is Natalie thinking? Is she pleased and proud? Is she mystified or confused? Is she writing a polite thank-you note to her Lieutenant or a excited demand for lots more skulls? Women’s attitudes toward combat were probably quite different in 1944 then they are nowadays with women serving as active warriors. The division between those who fight and those who need protection was part of the great gender divide of the day and helped bolster male demands for female obedience. But that is a topic that somebody else can analyze.

Pictures I Like: Grand Central Terminal, 1930 by Hal Morey

My Story: What a great picture! Cathedral light streaming through the windows of what was once one of America’s greatest places. A unique and… What? It’s not unique?

The Facts: Lots of photographs of Grand Central Terminal (aka Grand Central Station) with light streaming through the glass were taken from 1920 to, well, yesterday. There seems to be great confusion over when they were taken. The above photo may be found on line attributed to 1929, 1930, 1934, and other dates. That specific image is from the N.Y. Transit Museum. Most places claim the photographer is unknown, but there is a tagged photo from Getty Images that seems to identify the photographer. Or else Hal Morey of the N.Y. Central R.R.  just used this picture to advertise his photography.

When is this one? One place says 1926, but no other info:

Here’s another, similar, view tagged 1934, photog unknown:

But maybe the place selling that poster was lazy in its attribution. Because there are photos showing the opposite windows such as this one by John Collier, 1941, which is obviously the same picture from a flipped negative or plate:

 Just so you get your bearings, that kiosk is in the center of the concourse. This is 1920,we are told:

But it’s a cropped version of this one from the New York City Municipal Archives, who date it 1935- 1941:

But, whoever and whenever, these pictures are much the same. The image is striking but how many times can it be repeated before it loses its artistic punch and becomes just more kitsch? I don’t know, but I still like looking at these photographs. All of them.

Pictures I Like: Tankman, Charlie Cole, 1989

My Story: Whoa! What can you say? You know how big a tank is, there’s one on display somewhere within a hundred miles or so no matter where you live. Maybe it’s a Sherman tank at an American war memorial, maybe it’s a T-34 somewhere in Eastern Europe — these are smaller than the one in Beijing in 1989. Even so, walk around and stand in front of that thing and imagine it’s coming at you, how long before you step aside? And this guy stepped back in front of the tank when it tried to get around him! Then he climbed up on top of it and said to the driver: “Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you.” Man, what can you say?

The Facts: Charlie Cole was shooting from his hotel room when the tanks rolled into Tienanmen Square. He knew right away he had a good picture but was afraid the authorities would confiscate it. He hid the exposed roll in the bathroom and loaded the camera with blank film. He had another camera with shots of the wounded on it but he had no film left to substitute and he thought the authorities would be suspicious of empty cameras. Sure enough, the security police came into his room about fifteen minutes after the shot was taken. They stripped the  film from his cameras and lectured him on taking pictures while the city was under martial law. They left and Cole recovered the film from his toilet. His shots of the wounded were gone (but you can see plenty here and shots of corpses, too, if you need to).

Cole was not the only photographer to shoot this scene, there were at least four others. Here’s a shot by Stuart Franklin:

(Credit: Stuart Franklin)

How many tanks does it take to put down a student demonstration anyway? Here’s another shot from ground level by Terril Jones, notice the guys fleeing:

(credit: Terril Jones, AP)

There’s some video of this episode, too. People (army? security police? maybe friends?) dragged the man away. An American network tried to track him down years later but to no avail. That makes the song by Cui Jian adopted as a student protest anthem, “Nothing to My Name”, even more appropriate.

Tom and Hettie

Clarence Ashley, known as Tom to his friends, married Hettie in 1914. He was 17 and she was 14 years old. In the Tennessee mountains where they lived it wasn’t unusual to marry young. Tom was a fine banjo player and made recordings with groups like ”The West Virginia Hotfoots”, “The Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers”, and “The Carolina Tarheels”. Tom also recorded as a solo act. The first known recording of “House of the Rising Sun” features Tom on banjo.

Tom and Hettie with baby Eva about 1919. (I love this picture! Hetti has a great hat and she is so proud of that baby. Tom wishes he had something in his hands -- a banjo, maybe.)

But with the arrival of baby J.D. and then Eva, there was a family to support and you couldn’t make a living from playing banjo. Tom was always working at odd jobs here and there. He got on at a mill in West Virginia but, three days after Hettie joined him, the place closed down. It took eight months for the couple to scrape together enough cash to travel back to Tennessee where Hettie dug up the canned food she had hidden away before travelling to meet Tom. That’s what they lived on until Tom got his next bit of work.

Tom played the medicine shows. He was an entertainer, not a salesman for the patent medicines, playing in between pitches from Doc Whitecloud for Swamproot Tonic. He enjoyed this work: “I always loved show business.”

Every once in a while, Tom would record a tune. “The Coo Coo” is probably his best known:

The coocoo is a pretty bird,
She wobbles as she flies.
She never hollers coocoo
Till the fourth day of July.
      (hear entire song recorded 1929 here)

“My Sweet Farm Girl” is a double-entendre song that probably brought a blush to Hetty’s cheeks:

So early in the morning,
I cut her grass, you bet,
Pull up the hose,
I keep her lawn all wet.
    (hear entire song recorded 1931 here)

Byrd Moore and His Hotshots, 1929. Tom is on the right.

Eventually, the War brought jobs. The mills were hiring and Tom laid down his banjo and went to work. The children grew up. Eva played and sang with her father some and even recorded a few songs of her own.

Hettie, Tom, and grandchildren, late 1940s.

Then, in 1960, Tom was persuaded to play music again. The folk revival was under way and several of Tom’s early recordings appeared on Harry Smith’ s influential Anthology of  American Folk Music. Tom performed at concerts and events and toured England before cancer took him in 1967.

Tom and Eva singing together, circa 1960

J.D. had a house next door to his parents and, after Tom passed away, looked in on his mother every day. Hettie died in 1973. Tom and Hettie’s great-grandson, a computer programmer for IBM, has put up a web page about them.

Without knowing these people, except through their photos and recordings, I like them. They outlasted hard times, raised family, and made music. That’s about all you can ask of anyone.

Discussion of “The House Carpenter” with downloads of a lot of Ashley material.

Tom performing "The CooCoo" from Legends of Old Time Music. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwlOO8RG-og

Video of Ashley interview and he plays “The Coo Coo” (from Legends of Old Time Music)

Pictures I like: “Robbers’ Roost”, Jacob Riis, 1888

 My Story: Think I’ll just take this short cut… Uh oh. What’s this? That guy on the right has a gun in his pocket and I don’t think he’s glad to see me. And that other guy! Is that a shotgun? Maybe I can just back out of here… Holy! Look at those guys on the left! They’re everywhere! That fellow in the middle seems to be in charge. Maybe I can talk to him. He’s smiling. I think. Might be a feral grin. Maybe if I throw my wallet on the ground and run…

The Facts: Danish immigrant Jacob Riis started photographing the underbelly of New York in 1888. He set up shop across from the police station in the Five Points area of the city, known as the toughest area. In 1890 Riis published How The Other Half Lives which had the intent of showing that the poor were the victims, rather than the cause of bad living conditions.

Jacob Riis

The place depicted as “Robbers’ Roost” was at 59½ Mulberry Street. The building on the right was a “stale-beer dive” where drinkers could stay all night if they bought a few glasses. Stale beer was left outside legitimate taverns in barrels for pickup by brewery wagons. This stuff was stolen and various chemicals added to clarify it and make it foam. The resulting poisonous swill was sold for 2¢ a glass. The young ladies hanging out the window probably offered other services as well. In 1889 Riis accompanied a police raid on Mulberry Street stale-beer dives:

 A single stride took the sergeant into the middle of the room, and with a swinging blow of his club he knocked the faucet out of the keg and the half-filled can from the boss hag’s hand. As the contents of both splashed upon the floor, half a dozen of the group made a sudden dash, and with shoulders humped above their heads to shield their skulls against the dreaded locust broke for the door. They had not counted upon the policemen outside. There was a brief struggle, two or three heavy thumps, and the runaways were brought back to where their comrades crouched in dogged silence. (from How the Other Half Lives)

"Five Cents A Night" from How the Other Half Lives, 1890

By the mid-1890s there was a public outcry to clean up the Five Points and buildings were razed, parks constructed, and clean new edifices erected. More important, the original problem — the pool of waste water that ran off the city system and made the area uninhabitable to any human who could afford to live elsewhere — was cleaned up. Thus, crime was eliminated in New York City, banished with the unsightly slums, never to be seen again.

 

Pictures I Like: Weegee, “The Critic”, 1943

Weegee, "The Critic", 1943

My Story: “Look over here, you snooty bags. Over here! I gotcher class war right here, you stuck-up hags!”
    “My goodness, Miranda, did you hear something?”
    “No, no… Let’s talk of something pleasant, shall we? Like the ballet we’re attending.”
    “It’s the opera, Miranda.”
    “Whatever…”

The Facts: New York sidewalk photographer Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig)  took this picture on the 1943 opening night of the Metropolitan Opera. He had an assistant recruit a woman in a Bowery bar and load her full of cheap wine. The assistant propped her up by the opera entrance waiting for the swells. When Mrs. Cavanaugh and Lady Decies arrived, the assistant stepped away, hoping that the woman would manage to stand up long enough for Weegee to capture the shot. Weegee originally titled his photo “The Fashionable People” and it included a line of ordinary folks on the left, waiting to get in to the Opera. Weegee said: ”The plain people waited in line for hours to get standing room, listened intently and, as always, showed better musical manners than the people sitting in boxes.”  When Life ran the photo, the common people were cropped out as being uninteresting and the picture was re-titled “The Critic”. Lots of social commentary possible here.

uncropped version. "The Fashionable People"

For more on Weegee.

Pictures I like: Demonstration,Bruno Barbey, 1971

Bruno Barbey, Naita Demonstration, 1971 (published 1972)

My Story: You know immediately what this is — the Eternal Struggle. Light vs. Darkness, Haves vs. Have-nots, Good vs. Evil, Right vs. Left, Thesis and Antithesis — whatever the Struggle is to you (and it can be different things at different times) this picture illustrates it.

The Facts: Taken by Magnum photographer Bruno Barbey in 1971 at a demonstration against the building of Narita Airport near Tokyo. Farmland had been seized via eminent domain for airport construction and farmers began protesting. They were joined by crowds of youth. Japan was into its Flush Times then and the demonstrators are well-organized, uniformed, affluent, and probably soon to enter a lifetime of work at one of Japan’s major corporations. Airport construction was delayed, the Japanese goverment became somewhat more considerate, and the world wagged on.

Pictures I like: “Bratsk Wedding”, 1967 by Elliot Erwitt

Bratsk wedding, 1967 by Elliott Erwitt

My Story: Okay, you know what this is about, you’ve been there, that’s you in the photo. Maybe it wasn’t a wedding, maybe it was that time at Aunt Sadie’s funeral or when the preacher tripped and knocked over the pulpit or when the important guest was a little too noisy in the upstairs bathroom… You remember. You were supposed to be serious and solemn on this serious, solemn occasion and instead you feel this strange grin taking over your face as the great absurdity seeps into your consciousness, the absurdity of pretending that life is at all serious and solemn. Then you look around and everyone is staring at you.

The Facts: The photo was taken by Elliott Erwitt in Bratsk, Siberia in 1967. I don’t know what the guy is grinning about. Maybe he remembers the bride when she used to rock and roll. Maybe he’s wondering if the groom’s father will fall into the punchbowl he’s draining. Maybe it just struck him what a funny name Bratsk is.

Here’s a little on Elliott Erwin, Magnum photographer, and some of his pictures. Here’s his official website. Here’s Google image search.