It depicts an eight-year-old
brandishing an AK-47, his young face almost hidden by the characteristic Arafat
head shawl. The ominousness of the image—the fledgling fighter in the
foreground against softer-focus camp activities in the distant background—is
heightened by the long, thin shadows cast by Skoogfors and his PLO interpreter.
“The interpreter dubbed the
kid ‘le monstre’ and took the precaution of removing the clip from the monster’s
submachine gun for fear he might trigger it from nervousness,” recalls
Skoogfors. That precocious killer would be 26 years old now, and it tells more
about the origins of terrorism in the Middle East than reams of op-ed analyses
of the causes and cures of political violence in the region.
For more years than he
likes to remember now, shooting such hot spots was how Leif earned his keep:
For three stints from 1968 to 1972, he prowled the mean streets of Belfast and
Ulster on Newsweek assignment, which led to the publication of his first book, The
Most Natural Thing in the World (Harper and Row, 1974), the title an ironic
play on the theme of a billboard ad for Guinness ale.
Eleven of the 27 photos on
exhibition derive from his Northern Ireland assignments, one especially
delectable serendipity being “Political Speech, Belfast, 1972,” a shot of a dog
relieving himself against a stone staircase on top of which an orator trumpets his
side of hate through a bullhorn.
“Why did you give up the
exciting life of shooting the world’s hot spots?” I asked the tall, bewhiskered
Elkins Park resident at a wine-and-cheese reception at the second-floor photo
gallery.
“Well, I started losing my
photographer colleagues—Greg Robinson of the San Francisco Chronicle at
Jonestown in 1975, Olivier Rebbot, a French news photographer in El Salvador in
1980 and John Hoagland in El Salvador in 1982. I was beginning to wonder. But
my main motive for settling down here in Elkins Park was that I married my
painter wife, Anne, in 1983.”
Not that the new métier of
shooting the hot shots at local corporations is without its own disciplines.
Leif laid on a fancy buffet at the opening, the better to kibbitz with the art
directors of business magazines. When you visit the show, be sure not to miss
the color slide carousel that fast-fades through a swatch of the kind of
photography he’s now shooting in our area. Eighty percent of his business work
is in color; 80% of his personal work remains in black and white.
His Swedish draftsman
father evacuated the family from a small central Swedish town (Avefta) with a
timing that gave Leif U.S. citizenship by birth in 1940. The family returned to
Sweden between 1946 and 1949, but the Cold War persuaded them to become more
permanent settlers back here. So the man who founded the Moore College
photography department is fluent in Swedish and retains an interest in his
second “homeland.”
His portraits of his
friends and of the gallery owner, Peter Hiler (an idealist who believes
strongly in the importance of photography as art), are touchingly direct, a
moving complement to the harsh images of Nicaragua, Solidarity Poland, NATO
maneuvers and Portuguese revolution. Leif has paid his danger dues and now
probes inward.
The Skoogfors show is in a
series arranged by Welcomat photography critic Brian Peterson, a 33-year-old
teacher (University of Delaware) and freelancer (Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Germantown Historical Society). Brian puts together a monthly show at the Book
Trader as a barely-over-minimum-wage labor of love. The fiscal position of the
photography galleries is a perilous one these days.
“In the late ‘70s and early
‘80s, there were four full-time galleries in Philly,” Brian reminisced with rue
at the Skoogfors opening. “It was the hot new collectible. Even the Wall Street
Journal reported on the boom. Why, in the early ‘70s you could pick up a 16 by
20 Ansel Adams print for $150. By the late ‘70s the price hit the roof at
$15-$20,000. But the bottom fell out of the market by 1983 because you can
print 100 copies from one negative. The same Ansel Adams dropped to $3-$4,000.
People got wary, having bought it at the high point. The four photo galleries
all closed. That drought period is still prevailing. We maybe sell one or two
prints during a month-long exhibit at 20% commission.”
Skoogfors prints range in
price from $90 (for a Sandinista flashing a “V” sign) to $350 (for a dual
portrait of his friends Denise and Ralph). I’d go for the Sandinista—since
Denise and Ralph were at the reception.
“The nice thing about Book
Trader’s is the long hours—and Peter’s enthusiasm for the art. We have no way
of knowing how many walk-ups come to the second floor for the book browsing or
for the photo ogling. But the combination is a healthy draw,” says Brian.
“I try to make a mix of
shows—unknown locals one month, national figures the next. And we do tie-ins.
In December, when the University of Pennsylvania Press publishes a photo book
on the Centralia, Pennsylvania, problems, we’ll show the photos here. Slowly
but surely, we’re building an audience for serious photography.”
Leif Skoogfors photos: At the
Book Trader, 501 South Street, through October 3. 925-0219.
From Welcomat: After Dark,
Hazard-at-Large, October 1, 1986
No comments:
Post a Comment