Marlene’s coffin ~ (embiggenable) • SX-70 Polaroid camera / Time Zero film
I AM NOT A FAN OF HOW-I-MADE-THIS-PICTURE stories. My feeling on the topic can were summed up quite nicely by Bill Jay:
...photographers who carry 60 pounds of equipment up a hill to photograph a view are not suffering enough, although their whining causes enough suffering among their listeners. No, if they really expect us to respect their search for enlightenment and artistic expression, in [the] future they will drag the equipment up the hill by their genitals and take the view with a tripod leg stuck through their foot.
That written, and to be precise, what I don't want to hear are stories about the gear and technique of picture making. On the other hand, some pictures have interesting stories about the why and circumstances, re: the making of a picture. All of which is my lead-in to telling you a picture making story, re: the graveyard coffin picture in this entry ...
Back in the early 80s, I lost a very good friend, Marlene, to cancer. Marlene was an artist-a 1-woman show at MOMA-of some national acclaim. I met her when I was converting a 6 story industrial building into Rochester, NY's first legal residential loft building. Marlene was one of the very first to sign a lease.
SIDEBAR: Over the course of a few years, we became good friends. Inasmuch as the building was somewhat of an experiment to see if it was a viable concept (for Rochester), the residents-as each floor was completed, it was fully leased-essentially created an interesting community comprised primarily of artists. Photograpers (4), illustrators, painters, writers, sculptors, craft artists and the like. END OF SIDEBAR
3 weeks before Marlene's death-she was in Manhattan at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center-the word went out that, if you wanted to say "goodbye", now was the time. I called Marlene to say I was coming down from Rochester for a visit and she asked me to give a friend-she deemed it important to mention that her friend, Donna, was not an "artist" friend-a ride down. No problem and together we drove to NYC on a Friday evening.
Donna and I got up early on Saturday morning and went to the hospital well before visiting hours, went to Marlene's room just as she was waking. Not knowing what to expect, we were quite surprised to find Marlene in a very sound state of mind and body. Mentally sharp and physically looking like she had always looked. We gave her a sponge bath, she ate breakfast and we settled in to what was to be a very remarkable day.
With her non-artist friend in a chair at the foot of Marlene's bed and me sitting bedside, Marlene began to pour out her life story to me. The story began with her proclaiming that she thought of me as her "platonic lover". Surprise does not come close to describe what I felt, at that moment, to hear that from Marlene on her death bed. However, that was only one of many surprises to follow.
I can not begin to go into detail about everything that transpired that day. But to mention a few notable highlights ... we heard about Marlene's childhood and her relationships (not the best) with her parents and a sibling, all of whom were now gone-she had absolutely no family connections left in her life. Then there was the bad marriage which led into some interesting anecdotes about what I would call her somewhat freaky pyschic-light abilities. Then came another stunner ...
ANOTHER ASIDE: On Friday evening Donna and I had had a very pleasant drive to NYC. We discovered we had much in common ... she was a high school teacher who had taught and knew well my then-wife's 2 trouble making brothers. We shared a passion for a particular author and we both had, at the top of our favorite movie list, the same film. Donna and I discovered our connections, to include Marlene (but without complete disclosure from Donna), during the car ride and a halfway stop for dinner in a nice French restaurant. END OF ASIDE
... while Marlene did not dwell much on her bout with cancer, it was at this point in our conversation-during all of which Donna was a rather quiet observer-that she mentioned that her "non-artist" friend Donna was, in fact, her cancer friend. Having already survived her first bout with breast cancer, Donna was a guide, a cancer sister, for Marlene during her breast cancer treatment. A fact that Donna had never shared with me during our prior evening ride. And, in a turnabout, Marlene was a guide cancer sister for Donna during her second bout with breast cancer.
I was stunned and, to be honest, very impressed with the stoicism and, dare I write bravery / fortitude with which Donna sat silently by in support of her cancer sister. I mean, holy s++t, Donna was, literally and figuratively, staring in the face of what could possibly be in her future.
As the day continued, a parade of wellwishers came and went. However, as Marlene and I continued our rather emotionally intense, wide ranging life stories conversation-it was a conversation inasmuch as I was relating some of my own experiences-the wellwishers tended to become a rather passive audience to the day long conversation. The conversation had become a main-act show for the assembled "audience". Marlene and I were barely aware of the "audience" for extended periods of time. We were sorta in our own little "bubble".
The day was one of the most memoralble days of my life. It was intensely emotional and very deeply connective on a human-to-human level. I learned, from someone on her death bed, about things deeply personal in her life and, by inferrence, things in my life. It would be accurate to write that the day was intense, emotion laden, life affirming (yet so close to death) and wierd.
In any event, after visiting hours were over, it was just the 3 of us again. Marlene had dinner. We gave her another sponge bath, said our goodbyes and off we went.
2-3 weeks later Marlene was dead. There was no funeral service other than a grave-side memorial event. A grave site donated by one of her cancer doctors on his family plot.
After the crowd dispersed, and as I, my then wife and Donna were walking away, I turned to make a picture of the site. And, as serendipity, and perhaps intuited by a bit of rubbed-off (from Marlene) psychic ability, would have it, I pushed the shutter just as a beam of sunlight struck Marlene's coffin. One shot. No redos to get it "right".
Was it a wink from the beyond grave or just a coincidence? I can't help but wonder every time I look at this picture.