'Daughter of the Holocaust' - Limited Edition of 12 Photograph

I was a second year student at New York's Columbia College, the anchor of the giant Columbia University. i went to an evening dance, which strangely to this Oregon-born young man was called a 'mixer'. i wondered a long time what was being ',mixed' as i only saw the same dance behavior I had seen at high school in Oregon Boys went to to one side; girls to another. Rock music played loudly. The dance floor was empty for the longest time as each side drank their beers; it was 1968 and drinking age then in Manhattan was 18. Almost no youths in New York city had autos, so the dangers there of mixing alcohol and gasoline was not as serious as in upstate and long island counties. counties upstate and on Long island which had an older drinking limit. After a while two brave girls danced with each other, just a couple, then a few, in the dance floor, but for the longest time, no prized young ivy leaguers from Columbia were dancing. The mixer was 'open to all women' from all around New York, and for some the prospect of landing a 'Columbia Man' may have been a draw. For others it was just a chance to hunt the opposite sex. After a long time with the rest of the standing guys, this woman, Shirley S. and her friend, neighbor and wingwoman, Phyllis and i engaged in small talk. Shirley was pretty, and spoke with such a thick Brooklyn accent i could barely understand her. Best friend Phyllis spoke with the same almost unintelligible way, a sound now heard mainly in old movies, within older folks in Brooklyn itself, and from actress Fran Drescher, famous for her 'Brooklyn' accent, but who next to these two sounded like she was a Park Avenue doyenne, not a character actress known for her comic 'Brooklyn accent' After a while, Shirley S. and her friend decided to go on but in a puzzling move,Shirley asked me to hold her purse while she moved on and got a beer or some such and fixed her makeup or whatever it is women do in women's rooms.. They had planned to move on, but that purse drew her back as the evening passed. i felt strange a long time standing there hollding a purse; it was almost radiactive as women who saw me holding it may have figured it was parft of my outfit, oir i was holding it for a girlfriend. Neither was the truth. i breathed a sigh of relief when Shriley and Phyllis returned after what seemed an eon. i had stood with the purse as the two worked the room, and as time passed, they realized they were stuck returning since i held the purse containing all Shirley's id and property. The game many womenplayed at such college 'mixers' s' was for women to seek the men they really wanted and ruthlessly repel any young man who did not meet their ideal mind's picture. Women from the women's seven-sister's Columbia affiliate, Barnard College, across Broadway from Columbia, were among the worst practitioners, and many students like me shared the feeling the Barnard women had a point system based on how how rude a woman from Barnard could be in repelling someone politely asking for a dance. 'no without even turning might be the answer; no recognition of the polite male, often turning away to pointedly speak with friends leaving a brave young man feeling abandoned. There was not even an attempt at politeness when those women engaged in such behavior. The point appeared to try to crush a guy's ego,a nd many friends who reported this to me, as i experienced it, tended to agree. Male student egos were indeed crushed far more than feeling the disdain such behavior deserved. if a man was not the man of her dreams, he was rejected rudely; Even if he clearly was intelligent, polite, well dressed, symmetrical phsically and otherwise attractive. It was a game played all my time at Columbia until the Spring, 1968 rebellion, months after this photo in 1968, shut down the Columbia campus with its 25,000 mostly graduate students. it was the first of a natiowide rebellion and one that gave my photo aspirations a boost as i shot the riots. As the evning of our first meeting wore on and as Shirley S. and Phyllis had scoped the room, they realized i was 'home base' and returned. We did talk after that and friendlier i was a curiosity as an oregonian, blond and with good manners. i realized that the two and a half hour ride home to Brownsville, Brooklyn where they lived on the subway well after midnight would leave them a good walk from home from the subway station starting at 2;00 a.m. in a famously difficult part of Brooklyn. i offered to escort them, and they accepted. We got along better. We took the Broadway line, New Lots Ave.,, to the neighborhood and eventually, after a brisk walk to Shirley's home, I said 'goodnight to Shirley, and got a little peck 'bye.' and started the long,longly, cold walk in the early morning darkness to try to find the distant subway station. Fear is the main emotion i felt as i tried to find the subway and safety. months later on the same trip, Shirley and i passed a shop with a small flashlight beam moving erratically inside.the dark shop. The store was being burgled. This was a time of no cell phone; police were never around. once i saw a knife fight on the opposite side of thee elevated subway platform on my way home, the overhead lights reflected off the steel blade of a switchblade as one man swiped at another just as my train pulled in to take me to safety. I got Shirley's number; and she was funny, interesting and had a great personality. i would call her some time at the number she wrote down. The next week i called. i called and the older women's voice at the other end queried harshly; 'Who is this' Click, the phone went dead. i called again, 'Who is this' 'John' i answered again. The phone went dead this time with a crash before the call terminated. i tried a four or five more times after first carefully examining the phone digits given me by Shriley. i had call;ed the correct number. What was happening? i puzzled. A few days later after several re[eats. Shirley did answer. i told her of my difficulty. 'That was maaaaa' she said in her heavy Brooklyn yiddish accent. She explained to me maaaa and pop were from Germany and lived through the holocaust hidden away in anattic by unknown and unheralded Good Samaritain eating almost nothing but survived the war, almost skeeletal from lack of food, and emigrated to the ua where pop worked as kosher butcher cuttting ujp mostlhy chickens for a neighborhood. Shirley waas forbiddento hang arond with goyim such as i. The parents had a right; if the Germans had captured they, they and those who harbored them would have been executed. Their wish to keep to them selves among yiddish speakers and have their prize daugther marry a Jew were well founded. Did Shirley make this tale up; the idea only dawned on me inmy '0s. it sounded like the truth, and she told it as if it were the truth. i never needed to see Schindler's list to first hear of the story of individual heroes, but was touched by the movie of the Warsaw Ghetto by Polansky. 'MA heard your name, John is Christian name, so she hung up,' Shirley told me over the phone in that first call. i understood but was disappointed. i liked Shirley and wanted to see her. Apparently she felt the same a little. Shiirley had an idea. What was my middle name, she queried. i told her the name, a nondemoninational name that did not sa' Christian' or 'jewish' i coujld be either with that name, so ever after withShrirley that moniker was mhy name wheni was in Brooklyn. She told me to use that name when called next time, and it worked. We made plans to meet at her house. i borrowed a yarmulke from a student down the hall. It was a 'ivy league' yarmulke with a button on the back. Shirley's parents spoke Yiddish, and as she explained to her parents 'ma, pa, Jews in Oregon are blond and most don't speak yiddish, she said motioning to me and leading me to the door and a quick exit before i could before the parents could try to question me in rudimentary English. i was more blond than brown haired at the time. We saw each other the entire school year. Her family kept kosher, no pork, no milk with the meat dish, etc. So,or course,we went to a familiar Columbia deli and had meatball heroes and milk shakes as she rebelled against maaaa and paaa's plan for her to keep Jewish. Shirley was student at Huntah (Hunter College, in Manhattan). She was about my age, or a Little younger but somehow managed to graduate from Hunter and go on to a master's program at New School for Social Research well before i graduated. As summer came,she and Phyllis dreamed up how to free Shirley to enjoy her summer as i was to return to Oregon to work the summer.. They played a ritual game as the spring began to turn to summer and school was about ot let out. We double dated in someone's car, and Shrkelyand phyllis both negated eerything i said and literally started a fight about everything; but tried their best tomake me the instigator. This is a classic ploy played on many West Coast male college students by the last year's girlfriend. Women at Vassar played the same game, pretending to start a figtht then driving the male partner to leave, and trhing to make the male believe he had started a fight which eneed it all. it was classic and it worked. That was the last i saw of Shirley as a girlfriend, until what was to be my final year at Columbia,1968, just after i bought my first camera with which i took this photo, my first portrait. This photo is on one of my first ten rolls of film. to me it is more than a snapshot, i believe it shows 'art'. especially in the balance of light and dark.. Then a three minute west coast to east coast telephone call cost $3.00. it was next to impossible to keep up a relationship then across the country. i had liked Shirley and her unusual accent and was dejected as i took the train to oregon,a e-day ride sitting up. i heard the same story of the year end fight and 'relationship dump from others later on. it was a common practice. A year's good relationship, then the dump t year's end. The dumped male was to be made to feel at fault as Shirley later explained to me prior to my taking this image.. Our parting there in 1966 was permanent except for the day this one photo was taken my 'senior year'. Shirley and i somehow spoke once more and decided just to meet as friends. She came to my apartment on West 113th St., near Columbia. She looked gorgeous as ever; and i had just taken up photography This is my first portrait of anyone, ever. This is on one of my first ten rolls of film and in my mind, more than a memento but a work of art shown to me now by the careful balance of lights and dark tones as she sat, posing, on my sorry bed, the freshly cleaned window sills two hours after cleaning, covered once again with soot from the many heating boilers that filled the air with black wheneer it was cold enough for the many apartment buildings'central boilers to be turned on. That is why Manhattan was famous for white snow turnikg brown, then black within hours after snowfall cessatino from storms. Snow in New York City then turned dark almost immediately. Environementalism was not a word yet coined. years later, in the early 1990s on returnikng to photogreaphy and armed with some money i had gallery aualithy prints made from black and whjite and color internegativs and the best became teh 'negatives' from whijch almost all m prior black and white has beenreproduced, thje real negatives long since gone. i used a long distance operator to trhy to find Shirlehy S. wwhom i figujred must then be married probably with a house flll of kids or working somewhere, that could use a smart woman like her. Bujt her Eastern European name was unique, with onlhy feew of such name in theunited States. There was no internet, no Facebpook and nothing but instinct to gjuide my search. But she grew up in new hyork and many jewish new hyorkers such as maybe her parents retirdd to the miami area. i called the long distance operator, spelled the difficult to pronounmced and rare last ame and asked for the number of anmyone with that name in the miamim area. There were Three such persons, one a man. i called him. it was her uncle. S x x x , S .x x x x ,i haven't seen S x x x xi years. [Father Joina's daughter, so pretty. Then aolmost shouting she repeated her name twice again and shouted to this unidentified stranger over the phone S X X X XX . SHE GOT HERSELF A DESNTIST!!! SHE GOT HERSE;F A DEMTOST! The uncle repeated, ikn a shout 'SHE GOT HERSELF A DENTIST. He named the coith where she and her dentist husband lived, bujt i didn't write it down. i immediately gave up plans as an old friend of S x x x to send her this image, which i felt was a good, representative work, and let things be, fearing that any attempt at contact might easily be understood or a cause of friction. i never have heard from her or or her again. At the meeting this day in 1968 at my student apartment,she recounted how after me she had fallen in love with a HIPPEEEE, with heavy pronunciation on the 'EEEEs' at the end. At tjhat o gave up my plans to send nice, pretty, effervescent, smart S X x x x a copy of this photo; i felt it might be misunderstood.

Photography:Black & White on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:12

Size:36 W x 24 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.