17 August

Getting Married: Emma And Jay

by Jon Katz
Getting Married
Getting Married

So I’m happy to share the good news that my daughter, Emma Span, is getting married to her boyfriend and life friend Jay Jaffe. Both of them are baseball writers for Sports Illustrated, Emma is a senior editor there and Jay writes for SI.com, he is also working on a book about the Hall Of Fame.

They have been together for several years and share an apartment in Brooklyn, and I have never seen Emma as happy and secure as she is around Jay. I don’t know Jay well, we have not spent much time together, I talked to him on the phone yesterday and we both said we hope that changes, I think we are both sincere about it.

It’s a passage when a father hears that his only child is getting married, but I feel nothing but good about it. They are both enthusiastic New York snobs, they have little use for the country, but they are very happy, productive and connected in their work and lives. My first wife Paula Span and I e-mailed each other and we were both happy that this very good thing came out of our long marriage to one another.

Divorce is hard on everyone, it was hard on Emma, and it pulled us apart for awhile. That seems a long time ago. Emmas has gone on to build her own family and career and live a rich and meaningful life, and I am proud of her.

I was thinking about this news last night and I thought the one thing any parent most wants – the one thing I want – is for my kid to be happy. That is really all that I want.  When she called from Los Angeles to tell me the news – they are vacationing there – she was just joyful and excited and so was Jay. She was happy. She was happy about her aquamarine engagement ring as well, it was a good choice.  I told Jay he had really stepped in it now, Emma was his to deal with. He laughed. It feels nice, I wish them all of the happiness in the world. I’d love to dance about it.

17 August

For The Love Of Horses

by Jon Katz
The Love Of Horses
The Love Of Horses

Jill Adamski lives in Brooklyn, she has been drawn into the remarkable community of people who have been drawn to support the carriage horses of New York and work for them to remain in the city and in our world. She spent the weekend visiting Blue-Star Equiculture, the retirement home for the New York Carriage Horses and other work horses in need. It seemed she was in prayer when she walked among these giant horses as they ate their afternoon hay, I thought she might disappear into them.

17 August

Blue Star Symbol

by Jon Katz
Blue Star Symbol
Blue Star Symbol

Maria and I went to Palmer, Mass. today where Maria gave Pamela Rickenbach of Blue-Star Equiculture – the retirement home of the New York Carriage Horses and other working horses in need – a quilt she made to be a symbol of Blue-Star’s work. Maria and Pam have connected in a powerful way, and Maria has also connected to the big horses. After this photo was taken, Maria took a ride on Piper, the horse in the photo, he weights 2,200 pounds.

Blue Star lives under almost continuous attack but has many new and committed supporters. Maria and I are two of them. The work horses there get the best care imaginable. Please check out their wonderful work and help them if you can. The Blue Star has special meaning in the history of horses and in Native-American culture, Maria grasped it right away.

It was a powerful day for both of us, especially Maria, but I don’t think I should be the one to write about it, it was Maria’s day and she is writing about it on her blog. How proud I am of her creativity and spirituality, she has taught me how to love and supported my creativity every day, and she has taught me what love is.

17 August

Self-Portrait: Identity And The Love Of Self

by Jon Katz
The Love Of Self
The Love Of Self

Like many people, including many photographers, I hate being photographed. Until recently, there were almost no photos of me anywhere, now I see images of me all the time, thanks to digital camera technology and social media. In our time, more and more people have cameras – video, cellphones, digital cameras – and no longer hesitate to photograph me or ask me if I am all right with it. This is, of course, a test of identity. I am reading a new book I got for Maria – the self-portraits of Vivian Maier, the brilliant photographer who hid her work from public view.

More than 100,000 of her street photographs from New York and Chicago were found after her death. Not even her closest friends knew she was a photographer at all, and she was a great one.

Curiously, a good number of her photos were self-portraits, they are a powerful statement about identity from a gifted artist who hid hers her whole life. I can no longer avoid being photographed. We have two Open Houses a year, friends and visitors whip out their cameras all the time and take pictures of me. I am photographed constantly and see my image all over Facebook and many blogs online. And really, even if I dislike it, how can I complain? I take photos of all kinds of people all the time – this is simply a reflection of our time, everyone’s images are everywhere, the very idea of privacy or boundary has vanished.

I understand that I have personal issues about this. I have never found myself attractive, the less so as I grow older and especially a few weeks after my heart surgery. Open heart surgery does not leave one feeling photogenic, but still, the problem is older and deeper than that my own sense of self, my own identify.

I do not only take photos of beautiful people, I most often do not. I do not care what people look like, and need not to care what I look like. I want to be comfortable with me, Maier turned to self-portraits in a perhaps heroic effort to affirm her own identity in a world where she did not feel comfortable enough to share a single one of her great pictures with another human being.

So, inspired by Vivian Maier, and by my own search for authenticity, I have decided to do a series of self-portraits, another creative challenge, another step on the road to being honest and learning to love me as well as my life.  I have nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. Beauty is about spirit, not looks, I know that.

My face and my body have taken me far, I do not wish to think ill of either. I don’t want to be narcissistic about it, I don’t love me enough to get into a bathing suit and take a photo of that, and I don’t want to take too many photos of me at all. But if everyone else is going to do it, I realize I have the need to consider my own image, and the way I feel about my own identity. So I’m going to take some images of me until I get used to it and maybe, even like it.

This photo was taken in a mirror at a flea market in Stephentown, N.Y., I just held the camera up to my chest and pointed it at the mirror. The color is from a bulb reflected in the mirror.

 

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