Learning to See

by Elise Hooper

  Chapter 21

  I took to the streets again. A new energy thrummed through me ever since the landslide at Land’s End. Over the summer, newspaper headlines had been dominated by one man’s name: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had captured the Democratic Party’s nomination at its convention and no one could stop talking about him. Newsreels showed a toothy smile, balding head, and awkward gait that I recognized: polio. While the country shouted that Hoover’s time was over, this man, FDR, rose on a tide of hope. Although I had never been one for politics, I began to hope for him too, this man for whom I felt a deep and surprising kinship.

  On weekends Maynard and I visited the boys. When I didn’t have weekday portrait appointments that fall and winter, I roamed the streets. I found men filed into lines, heads bowed, and spines slumped. They curled into balls on the sidewalks trying to sleep. San Francisco, once gleaming and full of promise, had become crowded with despair. From my studio window, vagabonds shuffled along the street.

  One morning I made my way down Market Street, Graflex in hand. I found myself outside of the cafeteria where Fronsie and I had been pickpocketed almost fifteen years earlier. It was still a cafeteria. I pushed through the front door and found myself surrounded by women, their heads bowed over bowls of steaming barley soup. The red-checked tablecloths had been replaced by plain oilcloth the color of potato skins. The room had the hush of a library. No one raised her head to acknowledge my arrival. I slipped toward a table and took a seat to study the crowd. Next to me, a woman gave a polite nod and lowered her eyes as she sipped coffee. Her pale celery-green cardigan looked faded and she wore a hat style from several seasons ago, but her hair was combed, her clothes clean. It was her silk stockings that caught my attention. Dozens of neat repair seams ran along her legs like scars. Her meticulous effort to maintain appearances nearly broke my heart.

  I introduced myself, explaining I was a photographer. “Would you mind if I take some photos of you?”

  “Photos?” the woman asked, raising a roughened, chapped hand to her cheek as if to block me.

  “I don’t need to capture your face.”

  She bit her lip and cast an anxious glance around the room.

  “Here, you can photograph me,” said the woman next to her, taking a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaling. She raised her hands to the sides of her face and looked toward the ceiling with a wide-eyed expression. “This is my best Marlene Dietrich.”

  The three of us giggled. She looked just like Dietrich on the promotional posters for Shanghai Express that had plastered the city a year earlier.

  “Perfect,” I said, snapping a shot of her. It wasn’t the composition I wanted, but it allowed me to take out my camera. As the women settled back into their coffees, nodding at me, still with faint smiles on their faces, I took several frames of the first woman’s painstakingly mended stockings. Those repairs told a story. After a few more minutes of chatting, I rose from my seat and was on my way.

  I started visiting the hobo jungles scattered around South of Market. Everywhere I looked, suffering abounded. One morning I came across a man sitting on a wooden crate, his face hidden as he rested his head on his forearms, an overturned wheelbarrow next to him. Overturned—wasn’t that how we all felt? I photographed the scene and moved along.

  Maynard stopped by my studio one evening shortly after I’d visited the women’s cafeteria. He shook his head at my new images of the downtrodden. “Those places are unsafe.”

  “They’re fine. All people want is help.”

  “How are you helping?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He grunted. “That’s something I never thought I’d hear from you. You’re always sure about everything.”

  I continued filing portrait receipts instead of answering. He kept on talking, complaining about how Hoover was hiding in his bunker in Washington, D.C., but his question echoed in my mind: How was I helping? I still had no idea. I hadn’t tried selling any of these photos to the city’s newspapers. I’d never created work before simply for creation’s sake. In the past, everything had led to a paycheck. But now, with an absence of readily available work, I felt free to take some chances. Something was shifting in my work and in me.

  Maynard rapped on my worktable. “Hey, did you hear Imogen, Ed, Willard, and Ansel have started a new photography group?”

  “Yes, Imogen’s mentioned it.”

  “She didn’t invite you to join?”

  I shook my head and his face grew stormy. He slammed his hand on my desk, rattling the surface. “Dammit, Dorothea, you’re every bit as good as them. Why the hell aren’t you in this group? You know, they’re going to exhibit together. Your work should be included.”

  I sighed. “Honestly, I don’t have time for a new group. And I don’t want to sit around and talk about art.” I meant it. At first, I’d felt a prickle of indignation when Imogen mentioned it but didn’t extend an invitation for me to join, but this new group disdained the hazy, slightly out of focus photographs that constituted the majority of my commercial portrait work and demanded what they called “straight” photography. No soft lens, no textured papers, no etching stylus. They were all caught up in arguing about art and photography’s possibilities and limitations, but I didn’t have time for debate. I didn’t want to explain myself to anyone.

  Maynard coughed. “You know what I may do? I’m going to get a photograph of my ass and send it to ’em. That’s what I think of their stupid new group.” While he continued to rant, I swabbed at the lens of my Graflex to clean it until he said, “Hey, you don’t even care, do you?”

  I looked up to see Maynard studying me expectantly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You don’t even care about f/64, do you?”

  “f/64?”

  He let out an impatient groan. “That’s what they’re calling themselves.”

  “Oh. I get it, the camera setting—right.”

  Maynard laughed and draped himself on the edge of my desk, crossing his denim-clad legs at the ankles. “It’s so pretentious. Bunch of sycophants.”

  His indignation on my behalf warmed me and I smiled at him. Though he kept laughing, his eyes grew sad as they met my own. God, how I loved his blue eyes and how they reminded me of the sky. An odd silence settled over us as we took each other in. The quiet of the studio amplified the fact that we were alone without the boys. I wanted to say something about them, but if I said their names, I knew I would weep and not be able to stop. He might have felt the same because without a word, he stood, tipped his hat, and walked out.

  DESPITE MAYNARD’S WARNINGS to stay out of unsafe areas, I felt pulled to explore the unrest percolating throughout the city that spring. Labor activists called for strikes. I ventured into the streets to see the city’s May Day demonstrations firsthand. Depicting the taut energy of the protesting crowds proved to be tricky. I had imagined compositions showing anger and frustration but instead settled for unimaginative, expected shots: fat, surly policeman and picket signs. Though my Rolleiflex was more compact and better for action shots than my Graflex, its bulk around my neck, compounded with my limp, made me slow and vulnerable, but I kept at it, impressed by the energy of the activists.

  Several of my friends had joined the Socialist Party, a few others dabbled in Communist groups, and many from the Camera Club joined the Artists and Writers Union. I started attending various leftist meetings but didn’t commit to anything. Maynard avoided getting involved in any form of political expression. He viewed these allegiances as substituting one form of authority for another. A year later, when the WPA, a New Deal program designed to encourage public art, sent him to the Boulder Dam in southern Nevada to sketch and paint scenes from the massive construction site, he came back disillusioned, saying darkly, “The desert will get the last laugh.” Appalled by the dangerous working conditions, he was also angered to have received only $450 for what he considered to be several thousand dollars’ worth of art. I urged him to join me
on the streets. In May, we took to the waterfront when longshoremen went on strike in San Francisco. Soon the strike spread up and down the West Coast, and truck drivers and warehouse workers also stopped working in solidarity. The port, normally a hive of activity, became silent. Maynard and I traveled the docks, him with his sketchbook, me with my camera.

  One morning when I stopped by his studio so he could join me on my walk to the docks, a new painting rested on his easel. In it, men trudged along a dark city alley, eyes on the ground. “This is new.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been avoiding what’s happening out there for too long. I just can’t make arty paintings anymore, something’s gotta be human here.” He stood beside me, scratching his chin. “Where’s this all leading?”

  I shivered. No one knew what lay ahead.

  ON A COOL July morning, I heard the masses of people along the Embarcadero before I saw them. Maynard had stayed in his studio to paint so I went alone. When I reached the crowd, a tinge of anxiety crept up my spine. I photographed the faces surrounding me, contorted in angry grimaces. The mood of the crowd had shifted. A new restlessness simmered, its pace quickening like a slow river hitting a narrower, faster section of rapids. The noise of grumbling voices became louder. A man’s voice on a megaphone echoed across the crowd, but I couldn’t make out the words. People closed in on me, jostling and pushing. A loud explosion reverberated somewhere by Market Street behind me. Gunshots. Screams pierced the air. Hectic movement overcame the crowd. With my camera equipment hanging heavy on my shoulders and around my neck, I stumbled but managed to stay on my feet. A cold terror seized me. If I fell, what then? Would I be trampled and crushed? I pictured Dan and John. My breath became ragged. With my right foot, I couldn’t run. Folding my arms across my camera at my chest, I ducked my head to compact myself. More shots rang out in the distance. A fist collided with my forehead but glanced off, its aim uncertain. I gasped and kept moving. People started to run. Gaps opened in the crowd. I shoved my way off the Embarcadero and huddled in an alley. Bent over, resting my trembling hands on my knees, I struggled to breathe through the fear coursing through me. My fingers traced a goose egg above my eyebrow. Within ten minutes, I had made it back to my studio. I pulled off my equipment and lay on the wood floor, exhausted and frightened, but also exhilarated.

  THE NEXT MORNING’S newspapers called it Bloody Thursday. Two men had been killed, scores injured. I printed out my photographs and spread them around me on the floor of my studio. They weren’t very good, but it was a start.

  I crawled over to my cot and reached underneath it for a wooden box I kept stashed out of view. Once located, I lifted the lid and dug around inside. Mashed underneath some old sweaters lay a small velvet bag. Inside, darkened by tarnish, was the old silver Navajo bangle Maynard had purchased for me almost fifteen years earlier during our honeymoon, the same day we’d visited the Indian Boarding School. Slipping the bangle back on my wrist, I studied my photographs of Bloody Thursday. Though not great, they felt risky, worthwhile. They were proof I had been there and survived. They made my heart hammer, pricks of sweat break out under my arms. This discomfort, this fear—I was creating something interesting. I was no longer the woman who had fled the Tuba City Indian School in a panic.

  I was no longer helpless. I finally felt awake.

  Chapter 22

  April 1964

  Steep Ravine, California

  Dan and his wife, Mia, arrive just as the children and I are packing the groceries. Nathaniel wraps his arms around his mother the way a pea vine clings to a gate. Eager to show off the latest treasure trove of beach finds, the other children pull their mother across the room to the door that leads to the beach. Nathaniel follows in their wake like a piece of flotsam, leaving Dan and me behind, alone. He asks me about the weekend and I recite our activities: beach walks, blueberry pancakes for breakfast, several hands of rummy. “Nathaniel was eager for me to read his Henry and the Clubhouse aloud. All the kids seemed to enjoy it.”

  Dan nods, a faraway expression clouding his face. What books did he enjoy as a child? I wish I could remember, but can come up with nothing and feel guilty. I hate that guilt is always a close companion when I’m with Dan. A moment of silence hovers between us, and then I blurt out, “I need to go to Washington, D.C. Will you travel with me?”

  “Washington?” He fiddles with a button on his shirt, a wariness in his voice. “What’s this about?”

  “I need to see my work from the war.”

  “It’s a long trip. Are you sure you’re up for it? Can’t you get permission to have the photos sent to you?”

  “I want to see my Manzanar photos. All of my work from 1942.” It’s the one year that’s missing a file back in my studio.

  Dan gives me a wary look. “The impounded ones?”

  “Yes.” I consider explaining more, describing this new pain that won’t leave me alone or telling him about the MoMA letter, but say nothing. He paces toward the window and looks out at the beach below before pushing his thick black-framed glasses up his nose. He tugs his earlobe. Through all of this, he avoids looking at me. An anxious insularity has descended over him. “Where’s Paul?” he asks.

  “He’s repairing a cracked step on the beach stairs. He should be up shortly.”

  “Why won’t he go with you to Washington?”

  “Because I haven’t asked him. I’m asking you.”

  He looks away from the window and examines my expression, clearly surprised. In many ways, so am I. Without thinking about it, my fingers slide down my cardigan and I realize my other hand rests on the envelope in my pocket. Without saying more, I hold my breath, awaiting his answer.

  Chapter 23

  July 1934

  Oakland, California

  I stepped back from my print of Street Meeting, San Francisco and smiled. It was the last one I needed to hang. Willard moved beside me and surveyed the line of my photos.

  “Well done, Dorothea. This show will get people talking.”

  “I hope so,” I said dubiously. Would people really come to this exhibit? Who would look at photos of a labor strike? The laborers? Newspapermen? Other photographers? When I asked Willard this question, he brushed me off, assuring me there would be an audience for my street photography, but I wasn’t so sure. Yet even if no one came, the experience of taking them had changed me.

  But people did go to the show. One morning, after finishing a portrait session in my studio, the phone rang. I answered it and a man introduced himself to me as Paul Taylor, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

  “I saw your work at Van Dyke’s studio,” he said.

  I smiled to myself. So, that’s who’s going to the show—professors. Well, it could have been worse.

  “I’ve got an article coming out in Survey Graphic and I wondered if I could use two or three of your photos to accompany the piece?”

  “Is there any payment involved?”

  “Yes. It won’t be much,” he sounded apologetic, “but it’s something.” He went on to give the contact information for his editor in New York, who would be able to tell me how to get paid. I hung up the receiver after giving permission and unwound the phone cord from my finger. The payment didn’t have to be much. What was important was that someone would pay for these.

  Several weeks later I received another call, this time from Willard. He invited me to go on a photography expedition. Dr. Taylor, the same Paul Taylor who had called me about the Survey Graphic article, had invited Willard to assemble a group of photographers to visit a self-help cooperative at a sawmill in Oroville.

  “Isn’t Taylor an economist?” I asked. “Why does he need photos?”

  “He says he believes in using them to add some humanity to his academic writing. I imagine it’s all pretty dry.”

  Intrigued, I agreed to go and found myself driving out to Oroville a week later. Though California didn’t enjoy the same type of season changes I’d grown up with in the North
east, a burnished golden glow suffused the landscape. The light, the leaves, even the burned-out grass covering the foothills looked luminous. I snuck glimpses of Paul Taylor sitting in the passenger seat beside me: tall, clean-shaven, brown hair combed along a perfectly straight part. In beige pants, a pressed white oxford shirt, jacket, but no tie, he was dressed as if planning to lecture a group of undergraduate students later that afternoon. The only sign he wasn’t heading to campus was his brown leather work boots, but even they gleamed with polish.

  We drove several hours to reach the sawmill. Upon arrival, we split off to work. I pulled my Rolleiflex from my camera bag and drifted inside the sawmill’s main room to scope out the workers. Given that the only light came from the open doors and the gaping cracks between the wooden board siding, interior photography would be impossible, but I lingered, listening to the men complain about the lack of oil for their machinery and the need for parts to arrive from Oakland. No one noticed me.

  I moved back outside and photographed a group unloading timber from a beat-up truck. I focused my camera on the determined expressions, dirty dungarees, and bent backs of the men. The whole endeavor felt futile, but they gave no sign of being discouraged.

  Beyond the truck, Dr. Taylor emerged from the building where he had been interviewing workers. I gave a quick nod, turned, and hurried over to a lean-to constructed under a canvas sheet strung between the pine trees. A man worked small pieces of scrap wood through a lathe, careful to make every last piece into something that could be sold. His hands were blackened with grease and his overalls looked as though they’d never made the acquaintance of a washboard, but his concentration and graceful fingers never faltered. I photographed him from several angles, careful not to interrupt, before continuing my tour of the camp. Around a corner, I found a woman standing in front of a laundry line. Dingy linens hung behind her. In her meaty forearms that could have snapped me in two, she held a tiny, pink-faced baby and cooed at it with unexpected tenderness. Captivated, I photographed them.