| Last journey in a life as a photographer |
Last journey in a life as a photographer
PAUL GRONDAHL
Bethlehem
Joseph Schuyler heeded the lesson of acclaimed photojournalist Peter Turnley while shooting Carnival in Rio de Janeiro decades ago: Wrap your camera strap around your wrist to thwart street thieves. Turnley and the other students had flown out of Rio, but Schuyler had an extra day. He went by himself to the raucous festival to make more images. He wound the strap of his Canon around his wrist, as instructed. He captured some of his favorite images in a 40-year career as a commercial and fine art photographer: sweaty, muscular legs and torsos of dancers in brightly colored costumes shot in action at close range.
As he pressed his eye to the viewfinder, three men jumped Schuyler, knocked him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly.
But he never let go of his camera.
“He got home bloody and bruised, with a black eye,” recalled Eileen Schuyler, his wife of 46 years. He talked not about his injuries, but about the fact that didn’t relinquish his camera. By then, it had become an ex tension of himself, an indispensable tool for telling stories about the poetry of everyday life as he experienced it. Schuyler, a Delmar resident, died Jan. 11 at 71 after numerous rounds of chemotherapy and other treatments for cancer.
His artistry lives on.
Schuyler’s photography book has been posthumously published, “Truro Light: A Journey From Ocean To Bay.” A publication party is planned for June 25 at Perfect Blend in Delmar. Schuyler reviewed the book proof in the hospital two weeks before his death.
“The project kept Joe going. It means everything to me,” his wife said.
The coffee table book includes dozens of images he captured during daily rambles around Cape Cod over many summers that the couple spent at their house in Truro. The book is dedicated to her parents, Helen and Herman Rasker.
“Truro opened up a whole new universe for Joe’s photography,” she said. It was dramatically different from the shadowy, forested landscapes of the Adirondacks where he began his photography career.
Schuyler arranged “Truro Light” as a visual journey from the Atlantic Ocean in the east across the narrow isthmus of sand and dune, along ponds and the Pamet River to the quaint village on Cape Cod Bay in the west. Turnley praised the book’s “many wonderful moments of serenity, elegance and true beauty.”
In his artist’s statement, Schuyler said he was drawn to Truro’s “soft light, open skies, endless ocean vistas...” He added, “Whatever I photograph, my goal is to record the feeling of being in the midst of the experience.”
The viewer is drawn into the immediacy of the images, as if invited to spend a day walking and kayaking alongside Schuyler.
His wife has been going through her husband’s vast photography archives that he moved from his Albany studio to the basement of their Delmar home. The files date from 1973 and include tens of thousands of images in a variety of formats: black-and-white negatives, color transparencies, prints and digital images burned to compact discs. She donated darkroom equipment and other items to The College of Saint Rose and gave his Williamstown Theatre Festival images to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
Schuyler also was the photographer-in-residence for Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany for 27 years.
“Every time I go through his work, I’m astonished all over again,” said Mark Kelly, who owned a Delmar gallery that displayed Schuyler’s work. He helped the couple with the book, published by Fields Publishing of North Truro.
“The breadth of his talent was remarkable,” Kelly said.
The couple’s house is decorated with a wide range of art work, including several of Schuyler’s photographs. “I’m not interested in making a shrine to him,” his wife said, although she hung his favorite fedora on the edge of a mirror just inside the front door. It’s as if he stepped just outside the frame for a moment.
The couple met in 1967 in Washington Park at a Human Be-In, borrowed from the counterculture movement in San Francisco. He had returned from a stint in the Army, where he played trombone in a military band that toured Europe.
“He was a very gentle, easy person,” she recalled of their first meeting. “I saw him as a craggier Sam Shepard.”
In between getting teargassed at a Pentagon protest and marching in anti-war demonstrations, they fell in love. They married in 1968. They have a son, Jonathan, a sommelier at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and a guitarist.
Early on, Schuyler taught high school English in Gloucester, Mass., and turned to photography as a way to connect with his toughest-to-reach students.
He was a full-time photographer by the time the couple moved to New York City in 1979. She worked as a teacher and actor and helped run Town and Tweed, a women’s clothing store owned by her parents, and also her own business, Village Furniture, both in Delmar.
In his final weeks in the Hospice Inn at St. Peter’s Hospital, as cancer attacked his central nervous system and robbed him of movement and eyesight, he never let go of his camera.
Schuyler took photographs of sunsets viewed from his hospital bed. He took portraits of everyone who came to visit: friends and family, nurses and doctors, orderlies and janitors.
His wife made posters of Schuyler’s staff portraits and hung them in the hall.
They drew a crowd.
Even as he lay dying, Schuyler was both artist and teacher, sharing his gift.
In the end, nobody could take his camera from him.
“He never stopped shooting,” his wife said. “It’s who he was.”
pgrondahl@timesunion.com • 518-454-5623
Book celebration
• What: Book publication party for Joseph Schuyler’s “Truro Light.”
• When: 5 to 7 p.m. June 25.
• Where: Perfect Blend, 376 Delaware Ave., Delmar.
PAUL GRONDAHL
Bethlehem
Joseph Schuyler heeded the lesson of acclaimed photojournalist Peter Turnley while shooting Carnival in Rio de Janeiro decades ago: Wrap your camera strap around your wrist to thwart street thieves. Turnley and the other students had flown out of Rio, but Schuyler had an extra day. He went by himself to the raucous festival to make more images. He wound the strap of his Canon around his wrist, as instructed. He captured some of his favorite images in a 40-year career as a commercial and fine art photographer: sweaty, muscular legs and torsos of dancers in brightly colored costumes shot in action at close range.
As he pressed his eye to the viewfinder, three men jumped Schuyler, knocked him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly.
But he never let go of his camera.
“He got home bloody and bruised, with a black eye,” recalled Eileen Schuyler, his wife of 46 years. He talked not about his injuries, but about the fact that didn’t relinquish his camera. By then, it had become an ex tension of himself, an indispensable tool for telling stories about the poetry of everyday life as he experienced it. Schuyler, a Delmar resident, died Jan. 11 at 71 after numerous rounds of chemotherapy and other treatments for cancer.
His artistry lives on.
Schuyler’s photography book has been posthumously published, “Truro Light: A Journey From Ocean To Bay.” A publication party is planned for June 25 at Perfect Blend in Delmar. Schuyler reviewed the book proof in the hospital two weeks before his death.
“The project kept Joe going. It means everything to me,” his wife said.
The coffee table book includes dozens of images he captured during daily rambles around Cape Cod over many summers that the couple spent at their house in Truro. The book is dedicated to her parents, Helen and Herman Rasker.
“Truro opened up a whole new universe for Joe’s photography,” she said. It was dramatically different from the shadowy, forested landscapes of the Adirondacks where he began his photography career.
Schuyler arranged “Truro Light” as a visual journey from the Atlantic Ocean in the east across the narrow isthmus of sand and dune, along ponds and the Pamet River to the quaint village on Cape Cod Bay in the west. Turnley praised the book’s “many wonderful moments of serenity, elegance and true beauty.”
In his artist’s statement, Schuyler said he was drawn to Truro’s “soft light, open skies, endless ocean vistas...” He added, “Whatever I photograph, my goal is to record the feeling of being in the midst of the experience.”
The viewer is drawn into the immediacy of the images, as if invited to spend a day walking and kayaking alongside Schuyler.
His wife has been going through her husband’s vast photography archives that he moved from his Albany studio to the basement of their Delmar home. The files date from 1973 and include tens of thousands of images in a variety of formats: black-and-white negatives, color transparencies, prints and digital images burned to compact discs. She donated darkroom equipment and other items to The College of Saint Rose and gave his Williamstown Theatre Festival images to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
Schuyler also was the photographer-in-residence for Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany for 27 years.
“Every time I go through his work, I’m astonished all over again,” said Mark Kelly, who owned a Delmar gallery that displayed Schuyler’s work. He helped the couple with the book, published by Fields Publishing of North Truro.
“The breadth of his talent was remarkable,” Kelly said.
The couple’s house is decorated with a wide range of art work, including several of Schuyler’s photographs. “I’m not interested in making a shrine to him,” his wife said, although she hung his favorite fedora on the edge of a mirror just inside the front door. It’s as if he stepped just outside the frame for a moment.
The couple met in 1967 in Washington Park at a Human Be-In, borrowed from the counterculture movement in San Francisco. He had returned from a stint in the Army, where he played trombone in a military band that toured Europe.
“He was a very gentle, easy person,” she recalled of their first meeting. “I saw him as a craggier Sam Shepard.”
In between getting teargassed at a Pentagon protest and marching in anti-war demonstrations, they fell in love. They married in 1968. They have a son, Jonathan, a sommelier at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and a guitarist.
Early on, Schuyler taught high school English in Gloucester, Mass., and turned to photography as a way to connect with his toughest-to-reach students.
He was a full-time photographer by the time the couple moved to New York City in 1979. She worked as a teacher and actor and helped run Town and Tweed, a women’s clothing store owned by her parents, and also her own business, Village Furniture, both in Delmar.
In his final weeks in the Hospice Inn at St. Peter’s Hospital, as cancer attacked his central nervous system and robbed him of movement and eyesight, he never let go of his camera.
Schuyler took photographs of sunsets viewed from his hospital bed. He took portraits of everyone who came to visit: friends and family, nurses and doctors, orderlies and janitors.
His wife made posters of Schuyler’s staff portraits and hung them in the hall.
They drew a crowd.
Even as he lay dying, Schuyler was both artist and teacher, sharing his gift.
In the end, nobody could take his camera from him.
“He never stopped shooting,” his wife said. “It’s who he was.”
pgrondahl@timesunion.com • 518-454-5623
Book celebration
• What: Book publication party for Joseph Schuyler’s “Truro Light.”
• When: 5 to 7 p.m. June 25.
• Where: Perfect Blend, 376 Delaware Ave., Delmar.