sarah bird: flashback

8/6/2019 Sarah Bird: Flashback

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28 | The july/august 2011 |29

FLASHbAckStudying photojournalism at U

Tledme fromadegree in

anthropology to thelife ofa novelist,with stops at prison

rodeos,beautysalons,andthe LBJLibrary alongtheway

bySArAHbird

Facing page: Taken on Congress in 1974 in ront

o the old Lerners. This Page: Learning to use a ash

with my patient roommate as a subject.


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30 |The july/august 2011 |31

It was the summer of 1974. I had a freshlyminted B.A. in anthropology from the Univer-sity of New Mexico, a temporary job at the LBJLibrary that was about to end, and a boyfriendwho was leaving me for Scientology.

I needed a plan.I took to wandering the campus on my lunch

hour, as awed by the power and the might and the

marble as a peasant from the provinces come toImperial Rome. The journalism building called tome with its air conditioning and drink machines.I ambled around the cool, empty halls sipping myDiet DP and vaguely fantasizing about being a girlreporter. On the third oor, I stopped to peruse a

bulletin board. As I was considering whether topluck a phone number off of an ad for Room-mate Needed or one from the equally plausiblePassenger to Seattle Wanted, a thin, crackingvoice from an unseen source startled me, MayI help you?

It was summer break. The only open door

He beSt tHing tHAt tHe UniverSity oF

texAS ever did For me wAS to Stick A

cAmerA in Front oF my FAce And

oFFiciALLy jUStiFy wHAt i ALreAdy wAS:

An obServer, A recorder, A voyeUr, An

introvert driven by inSAtiAbLe cUri oSity.

on the entire oor led to what Id taken to be abroom closet.

I peeked in. It was a small, windowless ofceupholstered from oor to ceiling with teeteringpiles of paper. At its center was a slight, elderlyman, his pronounced buckteeth displayed ina friendly smile. His manner was courtly in an

old-fashioned way, more Southern than Texan,

more country than city.The old gent seemed to have all the time

in the world and an inexplicable eagerness tospend every second of it chatting with a cluelessstranger from New Mexico. I took him to be somesort of emeritus presence, a former professor so

beloved that he was allowed to linger long afterretirement. Though I left feeling as if Id had anaudience with a skinny Buddha, I didnt takethe application hed given me for his programseriously. I stuffed it in my b ackpack and forgotabout it.

Until three days later. I was at work on the fth

Above: Photo class started

of with all o getting Pola-

roid cameras and clicking

of shots o each other. Here

I am in Pease Park. Right:

Old-timers rodeo


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oor of the LBJ Library, unloading big brownboxes of miscellaneaphotos of Lynda Birds

makeover for her date with George Hamilton;

letters from schoolchildren outraged that Presi-dent Johnson had lifted his beagles, Him andHer, up by their ears; recipes for Lady BirdsBunkhouse Chilicataloguing the contents andrepacking them into mandarin red buckramboxes for display.

I had just nished cataloguing the last of sev-eral red boxes that Id lled with small, heart-shaped boxes holding pieces of Lynda Birdswedding cakelong since dried into leatherypuckswhen I opened a box packed with photosof the First Lady. And there, right on top, was theskinny Buddha himself receiving an award from

the First Lady.I quickly dug that application out of my back-

pack, applied, and was awarded a fellowship to

the graduate program directed by one of thelegends of Texas journalism, DeWitt C. Reddick.

The very rst semester, though, I discoveredmy big problem with journalism: facts. I wouldgo out to cover a story and return knowingeverything about my subject: why she and herhusband were breaking up, how bad her ragweed

allergy was, and how much she hated pimientocheese, but not, necessarily, her last name. Orwhat was in the dreary bill she was sponsoring.

Photojournalism, however, was another storyaltogether. A story where the facts reshuffledthemselves with every click of the shutter, where

no one could ever say theyd been misquoted,and you owned whatever corner of the worldyou could put a frame around. I was electried

by a sense of discovery. Of capturing places,people, moments, that no one had ever seenbefore. Certainly not in quite the way that I sawthem. The thought that popped into my headmost frequently was a gleeful, No one is goingto believe this shit!

Best of all, for a shy person, a camera gave

me permission and a reason to talk to anyone.Delighted with this new superpower, I under-took as one of my rst student projects photo-graphing shoppers at Hancock Center, a nearbymall. I immediately learned that my subjectsstiffened into taxidermy poses when I asked if I

could take their picture. But all I had to do wasinquire if I could photograph their sunglasses,

or cool trucker hat, or cute earrings and theyinstantly relaxed into proud possessors of styl-ish items, attered by every click of my shutter.

Back at the University of New Mexico, Iddreamed of being an anthropologist studyingexotic cultures, and now I was. A camera was mypassport to anywhere I wanted to go. And there

were so many places I wanted to go. Wurstfest,a quinceaera, the snow monkey ranch in southTexas, shows at the Armadillo World Headquar-ters, the dayroom at the state mental hospital,an old lady beauty salon, and rodeos. Especiallyrodeos. My rst was the Huntsville Prison Rodeo

where I sat in front of a row of French sailors intheir Donald Duck uniforms muttering, Quellebarbare! to each other.

It wasbarbaric, and I washooked. Not on theactual sport but on the unique subcultures thatblossomed around what I came to think of asrenegade rodeos: prison, police, kids, wom-

ens, gay, African-American,charreadas, and old-timers. I even heard about a nudist rodeo held,naturally, in California, but I never got closeenough to that one to learn the true meaningof bareback riding. To say nothing of rawhide.

I found a home in the j-school in the shadow ofthe big, rusty monolith on Guadalupe and 26th,

but I found a clubhouse in the darkroom locatedthen in the basement of the geography building.There is a Christmas-morning moment that digi-tal photographers will never experience of rush-ing your lm to the lab, loading it onto canisters,swishing, swirling, then holding the negatives

up to the amber glow of the safe light. Was theexposure right? The shutter speed? Focus? Hadyou captured the magic youd seen through yourview nder? Was it there?

The photographers who gathered to developprintseach one its own wonder of chemicalbaths and precise sweeps of lightremindedme of the crews my navigator-father ew with

during the Cold War. Aggressive, funny, glam-orous, filled with bravado. We were shooters. We were badasses. If you needed to be insidethe rodeo arena, on the dirt, when they turnedout the bull, then thats where you were. Ourphotos were the prize catches we brought backto the darkroom, and each one was a challenge

to the others to step up their game. My grouphad especially talented members who went onto win Pulitzers, own their own studios, and llthe pages of every important publication in thecountry with their work.

But the clock was running out on my fellow-ship and Journalism, unsoftened by Photo-,

threatened again: my masters thesis was due. Itwas made clear to me that my extensive foraysinto the graphic world would not be toleratedfor this nal project. I wasnt ready, however,to emerge from the amber glow back into theharsh light of facts. Through some marvel ofacademic double-speak, I managed to get a pro-

posal approved that would let me continue pho-tographing at my latest visual paradise, the HydePark Beauty Salon.

If I were ever to design a writing program,

The photographers who gathered to

develop prints...reminded me o thecrews my navigator-ather few with

during the Cold War. Aggressive,

unny, glamorous, lled with bravado.

we were SHooterS.

we were bAdASSeS.

Left: **she didnt have a

cpation or this image.

Above: Girls rodeo. Clearly,

I wanted to tell stories...

Top Right: This photo is

poignant or me, not just

because the Diamond L

Arena where I took it is longgone, but because a airly

amous photographer took

this exact same photo o the

riends who were posing or

me and went on to exhibit it

to some acclaim; At a char-

reada in San Antonio


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I doubt I could come up with a better project

than my beauty salon thesis. It brought togethereverything Id learned in anthropologygur-ing out how a culture affects an individualandphotographyfocusing on the details that tellthat individuals unique story. I had a sense ofurgency about capturing this world, since the

owner had conded to me that she was sellingthe shop because she was getting too old to runit and because so many of the clients shed hadfor decades were dying.

Heres how I described the salon I called thePrincess Beauty Shoppe:

The Princess Beauty Shoppe is a cozy, tacky

place cluttered with the affectionate debris of

40 years. A tray of brownies brought by a patroncombine their sweet chocolatey smell with theammonia stick of hair dyes, straighteners, andpermanents. The shelves are lined with dustyjars and bottles lled with beauty products from

another era. The chairs in the shop are lled bythe users of those products who come once aweek to have their hair washed, rolled, dried,and teased into the styles theyve always worn:beehives; a bouffant pageboy; perms as curly andtight as poodle fur.

Just say were an old lady shop, states the

owner, Miss Faith, in a proud apology.The salon did close, eventually replaced by a

custom-framing shop, and I went on to discoverthe perfect synthesis of all my impulses to cap-ture worlds and people in ction. I put aside mycamera and never set foot in a darkroom again.And now, except for rareed art photography,

darkrooms are gone as well. Chemicals, lm, andlight replaced by pixels. But sometimes when thewriting is going especially well, when it takes mesomewhere I could never have gone on my own,an exhilaration that seems bathed in a familiaramber glow overtakes me, and I think again, No

Clockwise from top: Atin cuscil magnihic tesequis alignatius,

cus et arum hicil magnimo lorit, experiore dunt volore moles

eribusandi dit voluptum accaepro occus voluptiunt qui di

illab illabo. Eruntibus simagnis eumquid ut uga. Rum quos

i diScovered my big probLem

witH joUrnALiSm: FActS. I would go

out to cover a story and return knowing everything about

my subject: why she and her husband were breaking up,

how bad her ragweed allergy was, and how much she hated

pimiento cheese, but not, necessarily, her last name.

sarah bird: flashback

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