The First Day of School

I have a confession to make. I haven’t been completely truthful with you about something.

When I wrote a few weeks ago about suffering through the absolute peak of my preteen geekiness, I said the worst moment was on my 10^th birthday in February 1964 (“The Fishing Trip, September 28, 2009). Upon further review, I must admit I lied.

In my defense, I wrote that because I was confronted with a Jack Marshall photograph of me in a little aluminum fishing boat. My own horror at my appearance came roaring back into my consciousness when I found that picture, but it was more than mitigated by my remembrance of that wonderful day of male bonding with my Dad, which at the time I considered the greatest day of my life and still would be were it not for the birth days two-plus decades later of my own children, James and Catherine.

No, the truth is the absolute worst occurred a bit later, when as a 5th grader at St, Joseph’s Elementary School in Shreveport, I was photographed (see below) wearing glasses so thick and so hideous that even now I literally shudder when I find it necessary to gaze upon my own image. On top of that, at some point during those same years, my ears grew faster than the rest of my head. Fortunately this was long after the Disney movie “Dumbo” was popular and long before the release of the critically acclaimed “Elephant Man” film, so the worst my so-called friends could come up with was the nickname “Big Ears” or just “Ears” which I was called fairly regularly for quite a few years. (Actually, as I think about it now, some of them still call me that, though I cannot for the life of me see why).

My father, Jack Marshall, either loved his youngest son so much that he couldn’t see the deformed youngster staring at him through the viewfinder of his camera. Or more likely, he could see all too well but he was too compassionate a father (and fellow male member of the human race) to let on. Because my friends, there are lots and lots of pictures of me from that period.

One reason there are so many pictures from that time was because in addition to being Jack Marshall’s always willing portrait subjects, we the Marshall kids were subjected to certain rituals. One was the “First Day of School” picture each September. No matter how big a hurry we were to get to St. Joe’s (or Jesuit, or St. Vincent’s Academy for my sister Mary), no school year started without us stopping to pose for Dad’s traditional photograph. He tried to vary the settings, but invariably there we were on the front or back porch of our house, sometimes with a bicycle or American flag prop, sometimes waving as if we were leaving at that very moment. Jack Marshall was channeling Norman Rockwell, and he was determined to do him justice!

Actually, despite my inner and outer geek, as I look now at the “First Day of School” picture at the top of this entry, I do see some things I like. Those are real Chuck Taylors I’m wearing, which I got not so much because they were cool (they weren’t back then, but they are now) as cheap. And I do believe my backpack, with its “US” symbol, is 100% genuine Army surplus, again in the Marshall family tradition of good value. Nowadays you’d pay a premium in a second-hand store for that kind of authenticity.

But the real reason I like this photo so much is Mary. Of course she is stylish – then as now. Of course she is much more thoughtfully coiffed and attired, no doubt the result of having actually thought about her first day outfit at least the night before (unlike my roll out of bed and put on what I wore the day before look). No, what I really like about this photo is the way Mary is looking up at me, idolizing her older brother for his wisdom and leadership as we head into the wild unknown of another academic year. This may be the only picture that captures Mary in that pose, for I can tell you with certainty it was short-lived. Pretty soon after that, she discovered that I, like most other boys of a certain age, didn’t have much of a clue about anything.

At some point, by the time we were both in high school, Jack Marshall could no longer count on getting us to pose for him every year. At least not on the first day of school. Definitely not cool. Now I would give anything had the chronicle continued, because even though there are photographs he took of us right up until his death in 1976, nothing quite compares to these special moments he commemorated each September, when we were unfailingly hopeful and the school year report card still was unmarked.

As for Mary, I’m pretty sure we’ve come full circle, and once again she does admire some things about me. After some indifferent patches in our high school and college years, we’ve been through a lot together, including marriages and divorces, parenthood and aunt- and uncle-dom, happiness and pain, lots of fun and not a few tears. Over the past 20 or so years, we’ve been downright nice to each other, most of the time.

But I look at Dad’s “First Day of School” photo and realize there is no chance I’ll ever see quite that look of sibling love and loyalty again. It is too childlike, in the best sense of the word, ever to be repeated. Nonetheless, there it is, forever preserved by the photographic talent and the love of tradition that were the trademarks of our wonderful father, Jack Marshall.

--Tom Marshall, New York City

The Art of Portraiture

Jack Marshall's portraits still amaze me.

There is a way that some artists connect with their subjects and show you something special about that person. I believe my father had that gift.

While Dad idolized the breathtaking landscape photography of Ansel Adams – and even did his best to emulate his remarkable vision of life in the West – I remember as a child hearing another unusual sounding name spoken with respect and admiration in the Marshall house. That name was Yousuf Karsh, the Canada-based photographer known for his stunning portraits of almost every important person who lived in the 20th century. Karsh made perhaps the most famous photograph ever, this portrait of Winston Churchill.

In my initial post to The Jack Marshall Collection­™ Blog, published last July, I explained my father's methodology for taking his portraits. It was simple. There were no sophisticated lights, or backdrops, or props. But somehow, with each person who sat down in front of his ever present Rolleiflex camera, Dad developed a trust which allowed that person to reveal themselves. Over the years, my father took portraits of family members, friends and neighbors, priests and nuns, girlfriends, boyfriends and spouses, actors, models, athletes, businessmen, politicians, the very young and the very old. As far as I know, he had no preference, and he approached each sitting with a single minded passion to understand and capture the essence of his subject.

Many of those portraits, including all those shown here (except for the crazy one of a very young me), are of people whose names even today I am uncertain. (If you are one of these people, or if you know for sure who they are, please let me know, and I will update the records).

Of the approximately 10,000 black-and-white images that I am organizing into The Jack Marshall Collection™, I would guess that maybe one-fourth are portraits.

My father's love of portraiture was obvious and long lasting. Some of the earliest photos I can find in Dad's archives are portraits, as are some of the very last photos he took before he died. To my knowledge, he was rarely if ever paid to take someone's portrait. He did it because ... that's what he did. There was something very special to Dad about being allowed to take the portrait of a fellow human being.

Most of the portraits were taken in our living room. The majority are quite good and a few are pure magic. I bet many of Dad's prints from those sessions are still hanging in homes in Shreveport and across the country, representing to the subjects a special, wonderful moment in their life when Jack Marshall took their portrait.

(To see more Jack Marshall portraits, please go to the Galleries page of The Jack Marshall Collection™ web site. I will continue to add additional images in the coming months.)

As times and styles evolved, so did his willingness to experiment with different cameras and settings. In work from his later years, I see more examples of what came to be known as "environmental portraits," where the subject was captured in a more natural setting, such as an office, or outdoors, or doing something other than merely posing for the photographer and looking into the camera. For me, though, Jack Marshall's enduring contribution to portraiture is best demonstrated by those simple, beautiful, black-and-white images he composed in those quiet, one-on-one sessions in our living room.

Now, more than 33 years after Dad took his last photograph, his subjects stare out at me, unblinking across the decades. As all people do, Jack Marshall finally reached the end of his time on earth. But he left for us hundreds of remarkable moments, images of pure humanity that will live forever.

– Tom Marshall, New York City

Images of New Orleans

In addition to Paris, Rome, Alaska and Hawaii on the list of places you must visit some day, you dare not forget New Orleans. Ever since its founding in 1718, New Orleans has held a special place among the great cities of America and the world.

After I graduated in 1976 from the University of Missouri journalism school, my first job was as a copy editor at New Orleans's afternoon newspaper, The States-Item. I got the job while visiting relatives in The Crescent City. The editor asked me if I would mind trying out – "sitting in" one morning at the copy desk. Having nothing to lose and intrigued at the possibility of living in New Orleans, I agreed. A few hours later, they offered me a job.

On my first day I walked straight into a newsroom that could have been the setting for a top-rated TV show. It was like Barney Miller meets Mary Tyler Moore. Back then, the team of people who wrote, photographed, and edited The States-Item was an eclectic cast of characters with whom every day was an adventure.

The newsroom itself was a riotous marketplace of sights, sounds, words and ideas. Teletype machines clacked incessantly in a glassed room at one end of the floor, and conveyor belts whizzed overhead, carrying articles and photographs from the newsroom to the composing room and eventually to the press room. Telephones rang constantly. People shouted to each other across the room. There were no computers or even electric typewriters. We still used carbon paper (youngsters, look it up). And in the middle of the newsroom was the copy desk, a big horseshoe-shaped counter surrounded by a microcosm of New Orleans: men and women, young and old, black and white, sometimes crazy but mostly sane, all smart, savvy and experienced.

I reported to work each day at 5 a.m. to edit articles and write headlines for that afternoon's editions. Among the denizens of the newsroom were:

• A hard-nosed editor who, not unlike Perry White at the fictional Daily Planet of Superman fame, delighted in throwing stories back on our desks and challenging us in very colorful and graphic terms to fix our mistakes or else. And the "or else" was usually even more graphic. He was always correct, of course, about the stories needing work, but still we trembled in our shoes when we fell victim to his wrath.
• A "rewrite man," originally from Mississippi, who delighted in telling everyone, "I've been all over the world and to parts of Arkansas too." But when there was an airplane crash, or a ferry loaded with commuters collided with a tanker in the Mississippi River fog, or a particularly gruesome murder was discovered, he could juggle three phones simultaneously from reporters covering different angles and bang out a coherent story at the same time.
  
• A zealous news photographer so competitive he once literally kicked a competitor out the open door of a chartered helicopter just as it was about to lift off, so that he'd be the only one to get a great aerial shot of a burning warehouse.
• And most memorably, a crime reporter named Jack Dempsey (may he rest in peace) who referred to himself as "The Writer Not the Fighter," dressed daily in a seersucker suit and straw hat, and signed the bottom of each of his stories from the police blotter with the acronym "A.L.I.H.O.T." which I came to learn stood for "A Legend In His Own Time."

It was so much fun I found it hard to believe I was actually paid to do my job.

Today, 33 years after I started work at the now defunct States-Item, I find myself transported back to New Orleans as I sift through Jack Marshall's photographs of the city where he met and married my mother. Among the thousands of photographs in The Jack Marshall Collection™, I find myself strangely drawn to my father's photographs of this beautiful old city.

My favorite is "Boy In A Bookshop," the inset at the beginning of this entry. This photograph and the other two shown here are found on a precious few rolls of film Jack Marshall shot over several weeks in the summer of 1959. These three are the best – but by no means the only – memorable images my father made that summer. Looking at the contact sheets now, it seems he was in one of those brief but highly creative periods of work so many artists enjoy. Studying each frame is like finding a new treasure.

In my New York City apartment, I have hung an enlargement of "Boy In A Bookshop," always imagining I am the little boy in the window. The nighttime picture of Canal Street (top), with the illuminated streetcar and other remarkable details ("Essso Standard Oil Company" to the right, "Saenger" theatre on the left) was shot looking riverward from near Rampart Street. To me it is an iconic image of New Orleans. I also admire my father's unusual vision of Audubon Park (bottom), depicting not only the expected imagery of mighty oak trees draped in Spanish moss, but also the added drama of the tower of Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church, where he and my mother had been married 14 years earlier.

For our family, New Orleans has been home to lives both long and short. A place for births and marriages, careers and celebrations, growing up and growing old. Even for sorrows and deaths.

For Jack Marshall, New Orleans also served as the breathtaking inspiration for many beautiful, memorable photographs, as timeless and unique as the great city itself.

– Tom Marshall, New York City