A PICTURE BOOK OF WORD PICTURES
In a recent issue of The Atlantic, Pittsburgh writer Damon Young pointedly examines a Teenie Harris photo taken outside a Hill District radio station in 1951, capturing the importance of both a place and time now mostly disappeared. Young ends his brief essay by saying “… when Teenie caught one of us, he caught all of us.” Perhaps, this is what the best lensmen do: remind us of the human condition and our interconnectedness. Local poet Joan E. Bauer’s latest collection, “The Camera Artist” furthers that goal in her own way with poems dedicated to emphasizing the work of luminary photographers, revealing in both its historical background and personal moments.
Ubiquitous in Pittsburgh’s poetry scene for her tireless efforts promoting others and for hosting the well-regarded Hemingway’s Reading Series with Kris Collins, Ms. Bauer spent a decade working this poetic angle until “over time, I realized that there were cameras half-hidden in my poems, even in poems about childhood,” she once wrote elsewhere. The result lies somewhere beyond the imitative attempts of describing photographic techniques and subject-matter on the page, bringing, instead, something fresh and bighearted in her approach.
In “W. Eugene Smith in Minamata, Japan, 1971,” she takes a documentary style in describing the surroundings of Smith’s iconic photo, writing, “The first child appears in a clinic. /Difficulty walking, talking. Then the second child. // then cats convulse, go mad, jump into the sea. / crows fall from the sky. // Methyl mercury. Fish float dead in the bay / along the hamlets.” The poem highlights backlash against Smith, “a beating by chemical company thugs / [which] nearly blinds him” before transitioning to the heartbreaking image he’s most well-known for, where “The mother cradles Tomoko, her misshapen daughter. / Light through a dark window. // A post-modern pietà.” Juxtaposing both Smith and his subject as sacrifice for industrial progress feels inspired.
Ms. Bauer reserves great admiration for Swiss-born Robert Frank and his transformational 1959 photo-essay, “The Americans.” In the title piece, Ms. Bauer has us considering his subject matter, including “factory workers in Detroit, / transvestites in New York City. Billowing American flags, // gossamer thin & torn. “Trolley-New Orleans”: five cars, / whites in front, blacks in back.// Toward the center, the black man with furrowed brow, / desolate & doleful gaze.”
The poem “At 90, Robert Frank,” acts as primer on the influential photographer’s life, quoting him, epigraph-like, when he once said, “So much guilt … You can capture life, / but you can’t control it.” It’s a profound way to get us thinking about this art form, especially in a world full of filtered selfies and social media influencers. This appreciation of Frank continues in “National Gallery, 1994,” where she makes it tangible: “the photo of the Ike rally/ (the tuba’s mouth a giant hole / where the tuba player’s face should be) // I could almost hear the oompah-pah.” It’s a nice musical touch after the immersion in images.
And while expositional, biographical aspects of some poems might feel educational yet less immediate to some readers, Ms. Bauer brings an imagistic lens to her own life as well. In“Fastest Man in the World,” we’re brought to her childhood years in Alamogordo with a “Flat-roofed ranch house. Thin walls, dirt yard, / scorpions, brackish water. Creosote, cottonwoods, / mesquite, saltbush & cactus.” It’s only after her family moves that the speaker reflects on what could’ve become of “one more Alamo teen so bored, / turning to Jimson weed, eating spiky seed pods / for escape in a blur of delirium and amnesia.”
In “Picture Perfect,” we’re shown the world of 1953 and a family coming apart among “the pages / open to Chopin on the dusty upright.” We even get to cross paths with a child who’d become a Manson Family member in the tender “For Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme.”
Joan Bauer’s “The Camera Artist” stands as ambitious and full of the enthusiasm shutterbug Berenice Abbott exudes when she remarks in “Brilliant Modernist, Armored Life”: “I’m a photographer / I go anywhere.”