From The Vault Of Art Shay: Signs

In 1975 I wandered away from shooting the AMA convention in the Atlantic City Convention Center to look at the nearby ocean. There, in plain sight was this illiterate pooch not picknicking or lunching- but somehow we both got shooed away for breaking some unwritten law or other.\r\n

The most terrifying camera subjects for a photo-journalist, are the well-meaning, well-dressed ,semi-literate God-invoking , middle class ones , like Mormon recruiters, Tea Party zealots or peddlers of the 7th Day Adventist magazine, Awake. They can\'t imagine anyone choosing to disagree with them. They often line up behind candidates like Rick Santorum, pointing out that our society is so screwed up, Santorum is forced to school his kids at home. Only if you dig , or the NY Times does, do you find out that this form of independence costs them a million bucks a year. A jump-cut on screen could tell this story, sort of, in five seconds of air time. The horror of the printed sign I show would be subsumed by eye-blink brevity.\r\n

These farm wives, taking a break from the routine of their farmer husbands, all attending the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, display the self-mocking kind of attitude that is the hallmark of the real American middle class. These are the good ladies who routinely send teir sons and daughters to futile wars, whose families glady accept farm subsidies for NOT growing certain crops and believe a President Reagan whom I once saw accepting the thanks of grow-nothing farmers for their government checks, then address a rurasl audience on his plan to fade the government out of- er- interfering with private enterprise. Same week I enjoyed Medicare paying my $40,000 surgery bill I watched college kids- $9 an hour- parading against Medicare. I wondered how they\'d react to having to help pay $40,000 for mom, dad or grandpa\'s surgery. Relative to politics, Hogs Are Beautiful.\r\n

Semi-literate chalkers scrawl their hate in a south side back alley of Chicago. 1953. What kind of American haters spell \"bastards\" \"basters\" and Negroes \"Nearg-\" ? The point, I think, of my picture.\r\n

Irony helps the photojournalist.\r\n

A well-meaning handball partner of mine, Rudy, kindly refuses to board Mimsey on his shoulder and her six siblings in his gym bag.\r\n

The combination of the Contemporary Art Museum\'s new sign and its proximity to a hideous neighboring wall led to a picture I offered them as contemporary art. I think.\r\n

David Mamet, the movie writer(who covered the convention for The Seed), has this picture over his writing desk at home. \"It reminds me of 1968 every morning,\" he told me. \"It sums up the convention for me. \" The sign says one thing , the soldiers\" bayonets say the exact opposite. The debate still goes on. I shot this for Time, but the editors used two other images of mine big so I was happy.\r\n

A famous writer -poet -screenwriter, Barry Gifford ,has used this picture to wrap around his Seven Stories Press book of short stories. One of his stories concerned the demise of a strip-tease theater like this one on State Street, Chicago.\r\n

Nelson Algren, in doorway, dragged me to meet one of his dear friends, animal maven Viola Larsen.\r\n

Regular hangers-out on Madison Street.

While introducing Marcel Marceau to a typical Chicago pool parlor, my Leica picked out this teen-aged pool shark, the journalist in me exulted in the door sign behind him. \"I\'m sure you noticed it too,\" Nelson said, the novelist in him responding to the sign\'s exaggeration. A good answer to the people who wonder why I spent years wandering around Chicago with Algren.\r\n

Coming off the still-unshovelled on-ramp from the Outer Drive at Fullerton Avenue, I wallowed to a slippery stop and, as the horns of impatient Chicagoans scolded me, I pulled my Nikon from the trunk and captured what the tail of my eye had registered&,dash;an involuntary editorial comment on our deceased Mayor the preceding day. Signs!\r\n