The photographs on contact sheet #61 are from two times in my life.  The photos with an “a” in their serial number are of my cousin Cindy Meyer’s wedding reception to Larry Kater.  As with most of my wedding photographs, the bride and groom are no longer married.  They did have two wonderful daughters together who are now themselves parents.  The wedding reception was in the cabin that was owned by Iowa Southern Utilities, the company that Cindy’s father Don worked for.

I lost most of the film I'd shot of that wedding.  My aunt Marg was furious with me.  I had no idea where it went.  I thought perhaps that someone had grabbed the film off my desk in the office off of the University of Iowa's journalism school darkroom. 

The other set of photos were taken in the first month after my first marriage ended.  Three days before hosting my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary my wife Janet Paige Kuller returned from a national conference to say that she wanted to end the marriage to pursue a relationship with her married professor of marriage counseling.  Our marriage was then the foundation of my life.  Suddenly I had no foundation.

I also had no place to live.  We had been living in a rented farmhouse north of Tipton Iowa so that Janet could work on her rural community social work specialization.  I had a job teaching photojournalism and a master’s degree program in journalism to work on in Iowa City.  I needed to find a new place to live in Iowa City.  

My friends Ruth Burch and MaryBeth Sixt invited me to stay in their apartment, the upstairs of 518 Ronalds.  MaryBeth said that I could stay with them as long as I liked so long as I followed two rules.  Rule #1, I needed to wear an apron at all times.  Rule #2, I was to wear nothing else.  

There is a photo of MaryBeth in a booth at the Deadwood tavern in downtown Iowa City.  I don’t remember seeing her in the Deadwood any other time.  She then worked as a bartender at a country and western themed place near Interstate 80 in Coralville.  During slow times she would get her regulars to practice their field sobriety tests.  “Alright everyone!  Let’s all count down from 100 by threes!”  and then she led the chant.

The Deadwood was the tavern I most frequented in my Iowa City years.  It was downtown and almost next door to University Camera where I worked a few months.  It was where I met Suby (pronounced Sue B), my second wife and mother to our daughter Amelia.

Ruth Burch, the woman in the photo holding the beer while walking in the woods, was the friend who introduced me to Suby.  That meeting happened a few years after these photos.

Ruth became one of my best friends.  She was Suby’s best friend.  We met at the River City Housing Co-op when I was married to Janet, but when Janet had moved out to her own apartment.  Ruth also introduced me to the many many friends I met in and through 518 Ronalds.  There is a photo on this contact sheet of that house, the site of many adventures.

One of my most treasured moments with Ruth was in that month after Janet had dumped me.  Ruth told me that my biggest problem was that I needed to get laid.  Except for a few near Misses before Janet, Janet was the only woman I’d ever had sex with.  I lost my virginity to her.  I had thought that Janet would be the only woman I would ever have sex with.  We had been together from December 1974 to that August of 1980.  I thought that I would be the only man she would ever have sex with again (I was not her first).  Silly me.

I agreed with Ruth that I needed to get laid, but I was unprepared for the rest of her sentence, “and I’m just the woman to do it.”  She was as good as her word.  And she treated me wonderfully.  There is a photo on this contact sheet that I took of her room afterwards.  I had felt my world change.

We quickly knew that we would not be partners in life, but closest friends.  Ruth died in 2010.  Get your colonoscopy!

The other photos are rather more mundane.  There is a set of photos of one of my intro to photojournalism classes.  It looks like I was demonstrating one of my key lessons - know your camera so well that when you take photographs you can concentrate on the social interaction with your subject rather than on the photographic process.  If you the photographer aren’t thinking about the camera but thinking about your subject, your subject will be thinking about his or her interaction with you and not the camera.  In this set of photos I was talking about that principle as I was simultaneously shooting photos of them.  Demonstrating what I was saying.

This principle links with the other major principle - your relationship as a photographer with your subject will be mirrored in the relationship between your photograph and its audience (visience).  Do you agree?

The photos discussed in this essay can be found in the section Photos by Number in gallery 00062.