Walt Lawrence shares three wonderful stories about photography -- insights into why he chooses this medium and his subjects.
1. My father's photo albums
As far back as I can remember my father always had a camera and a couple of photo albums. Since he was born in 1912 he grew up during the great depression which I believe fueled his interests in fishing and hunting. He spent a considerable amount of time in the woods and on the lakes and rivers of northern New York, New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada hunting and fishing with other young men as a major source of their own sustenance. Somewhere along the way he also developed an interest in photography and worked for a brief period in a camera store. These two interests in his life came together in photo albums that he used to document his travels, hunting and fishing exploits, and his pursuit of the fairer sex. The photo albums in turn became a great source of information for my brother and me about our father’s life before we were born. There would be a few pages of photos of fishing and hunting followed by a page or two of a current girlfriend then more fishing and hunting, followed by another girlfriend and eventually a girlfriend that my brother and I eventually recognized as our mother when she was dating our father. As fate would have it, the fishing and hunting and girlfriend pictures became fewer and fewer as photographs of my brother and I began to appear. My brother and I did a lot of fishing with our father but we never got into hunting. We did go on a few hunting trips with him hiking through fields and woods as he looked for game. Whatever we brought home was prepared and put into the freezer for future meals. Our father fished well into his eighties and when he passed away at the age of 88 he still had several fish fillets in his freezer. While I never really had any interest in photography while I was living with my parents I have no doubt that my current interests in photography and the outdoors and wildlife were surely planted in my brain by my father’s efforts to document his life experiences in his photo albums.
2. The USS Enterprise
I went into the Navy right after graduation from the University of Maine in 1961. While stationed at a Naval Air Intelligence Center in Kenitra, Morocco I along with about five other junior officers were given temporary duty orders to the carrier USS Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) for an exercise in the Mediterranean Sea. My first thought was I needed to buy camera to document this experience so I began a quick search for an inexpensive camera. Fortunately my commanding officer had a Kodak 35mm bellows type camera that he was willing to sell for the princely sum of $25. He had purchased the camera as a young Navy lieutenant flying cargo planes from West Germany into Berlin as part of the Berlin Airlift. During this short three day cruise I took photographs of planes taking off and landing and of ships sailing with us in the Task Force. On the very last day I went topside and was surprised to see the USS Enterprise, the US Navy’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, was sailing right next to the FDR. The Enterprise had joined the fleet in 1961 so we were all excited to see her. Naturally I pulled out my camera and took a few pictures of the ship. Later that afternoon we flew off the Roosevelt to begin our trip back to Morocco. Once my heart returned to its normal position in my chest after the catapult launch I wondered if I would ever see the Enterprise again.
Thirty five years later I got a phone call from a Navy buddy and he asked if my wife and I would like join him and his wife on a dependents’ day cruise aboard the USS Enterprise. His son Rob was a squadron pilot on the Enterprise so Maria and I got a c
hance to sail on this ship for one day out of Norfolk, Virginia. It was the thrill of a lifetime to stand behind Rob at the Landing Signals Officer (LSO) station as he guided pilots down to the deck. I cannot tell you the excitement and thrill we both felt standing right behind Rob photographing aircraft approaching the ship at 150 miles an hour and touching down just 75 feet to our left. My camera gear had been seriously updated several times since that day during 1963 in the Mediterranean; however, the excitement of shooting images of things that fly, aircraft and birds, has continued to this day. The idea of taking a photograph of Maria standing on the end of the flight deck on the USS Enterprise was pretty high on the thrill list as well.
3. "I have no hut or wall to put it on"
In 1969 my wife and I and another couple decided to go on a photo safari in East Africa. We found a travel agent who put the itinerary together with our own driver and VW Microbus for a trip that would take us to Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. We would drive from one game park to another allowing for a 2-3 night stay in each park. The opportunity to observe and photograph wildlife in these parks is every photographer’s dream. However, the sights and sounds of migrating herds thundering across the Serengeti is hard to comprehend when one’s only point of reference to these same creatures has been in a zoo.
On the days when we would be traveling between parks our driver would arrange for the lodge to pack up a boxed picnic lunch for the five of us. One day, having stopped for lunch, we observed a Masai man walking out of the bush and starting to approach us. He was very tall, almost regal in stature, and even though he was carrying a six foot spear we did not feel threatened. It seemed to be as though he had just walked off a movie set. We thought that this was our moment to really get some excellent shots of a Masai. We had brought along a Polaroid camera just in case we came upon a situation where we felt that the presentation of a printed photograph might help clinch the deal. We asked our driver to ask the Masai if he would allow us to take his photograph for which we would give him a print and he declined. We had experienced Masai in some of the game parks and for a fee they would typically allow us to take their picture. However, this man was such a handsome subject that we asked our driver to try again. This time the man’s response was so profoundly honest and insightful that we were stunned and did not pursue the subject again. His words as translated by our driver from Swahili to English were, “I have no hut or wall to put it on.” Needless to say we did not get his photograph but we certainly got a story and in some ways were taught a lesson to remember for the rest of our lives.
Walt is a resident artist at the Artists' Atelier, 756 Walker Road, Great Falls VA
