"WHAT'S
NEW?"
photography site, featuring
sailors navy town nightlife, at
"I've
lived through worse times," I told a friend last week. "But
I was younger then."
FLASHBACK
The
second week of September 2001 marked the 10 year anniversary of my
relationship with THE HAWORTH PRESS.
TRAUMA
Probably
I don't need to explain how it happened that celebration of this anniversary was preempted by breaking news.
LASH-BACK
At the
height of mid-80's cold war tensions, I was working as a civilian
employee on US Army bases in Germany where terrorist bombings occurred
with such frequency as to almost become routine.
One
of my current projects is editing a 10-year anniversary second edition
of my first book, BARRACK BUDDIES. It was during the 1991 Gulf War
that I left Germany -- my home since 1982. My interest in interviewing
(and later photographing) US servicemen grew out of my stubbornly
dogmatic pacifism. Seeing all my GI friends go off to war was more
than I could take.
None
of my friends were killed. And within months I
found a publisher for my interviews with them....
Ten
years later I find myself in a military town emptied of sailors
"off to war."
STRAY
CAT DRESS BLUES
Actually,
as it happens almost all of my Navy friends here had already been
discharged before 11 SEP 01. Most for getting into trouble. I've always had a soft spot for
rebels, troublemakers, military bad boys (and military bad girls
too, now).
Last
month I turned down an invitation to write a feature story for a
prestigious glossy magazine on the state of "gays in the
military under George II."
I
could have used the money. Badly. But (a) my work has always been more
documentarian than political; (b) since my first invitation in 1993 to
appear on HARD COPY I've consistently said no to any media exposure I
feared might inadvertently exert any negative influence on
the conditions under which service personnel work and live. And (c)
for the last five years or so the primary focus of my work has been
chronicling homoeroticism among military men who do not necessarily identify
themselves as gay.
Since
"9-11" I've also been ruminating on the question of trivialization.
That
my studio photography of sailors these last two years has largely been
limited to men (and women) on their way out of the Navy just sort of
happened. It's since become requisite. Even so, the second week
of September I "blacked out" the galleries of half-naked
sailors on this site in acknowledgement of the special sacrifices demanded of active duty service members.
In
a statement on the direction I see my work taking, I wrote:
My
photography (as my five books) is neither commercially nor politically
motivated. Occasionally, I do work up something resembling a spark of
lewd-vagrant voyeuristic prurience. Mostly, though (and more and more...), I'm
just a not-ready-for-PBS documentarian.
KEYWORD
PHRASE:
"time capsule."
From here on
my writing will likely concentrate
on the closing decades of the 20th century:
preserving stories that would
otherwise go unrecorded.
And
sharing some stories of my own.
- S.Z., 30 NOV 01
