Nine years ago, my wife and I moved from one location in California to another. New job, different climate, and the necessity to leave behind a lot of extra possessions. Much of it was easy to give away or dispose of, but old photos were difficult to part with. I had boxes of mounted prints that I’d displayed, and bigger boxes of prints that would never be hung on walls. I made a painful decision to throw away about 250 mounted prints. At the dump I tossed loaded boxes of prints into the pit where bulldozers scooped them up and put them into crushing machines. The last of eight boxes tore open and scattered the contents. A particularly striking image was left staring at me. It was a portrait of Steve Scher, my housemate from our time as students at Brooks Institute of Photography. It was taken around 1978. Neither one of us liked the haunting image because it was out of character. Steve died many years ago and I have other shots of him taken during that time that trigger happier memories. This was one print I would not miss.
The second shot is also of Steve and was taken the same day. Both were done at the Santa Barbara Mission. While the first one portrays Steve as a mean guy, the second one brings up a better memory.
I was posing Steve when two pretty young women approached him and one asked if he would take her confession. ‘Father Stephen’ said, “Of course, my child. Please follow me.” He led her into the church. They were inside for nearly an hour.
I don’t know what the penalty is for a guy to impersonate a priest, but from what Steve related to me about the encounter, it was a risk worth taking. That incident was the legacy of the Steve I fondly remember.
Technical details of color featured shot: Originally shot on B&W film with a Hasselblad Superwide 38mm Biogon. The negative was used to expose 8×10 sheets of Kodalith film. The Kodaliths were masked in various areas and pin registered on a light box. A sheet of 8×10 Ektachrome was exposed under each Kodalith using a color enlarger and various filtration settings. I don’t have my notes and that’s all I can remember. This was done ten years before Photoshop was released, so manipulations of photos had to be done in physical layers, much like Walt Disney did in the creation of his film Fantasia.
Technical details of portrait: 500CM Hasselblad with 80mm Planar. Shot of scattered prints: Cell phone camera.
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