The Story Behind…

“Chicago Cultural Center”

Photographed in Chicago, Illinois, June 1994

My Camera and Me

By the summer of 1994, Skratch was quickly becoming one of my closest friends. We had met at the end of 1989, the first week of our Senior Year at Kearney High School. We met through Student Council. We both had been elected by our classmates. I had run my campaign from Australia. Campaigns for Student Council at my high school back then consisted of filing the paperwork (filling out a form at the front office), promoting yourself (making a sign to hang in the hallway or cafeteria the week of elections), and giving a speech during the annual Student Council Election Assembly to our classmates.

I had wanted to be on Student Council since 7th Grade. Each year I had filed the paperwork, made a sign to promote myself and given a speech during the assembly. And every year I lost. 8th grade, I lost. 9th grade, another loss. By 10th grade, my posters were mostly an excuse to spend extra time in the art classroom after school making them more and more extravagant than the previous year’s. My speeches were becoming stand-up comedy routines. By this point, losing was becoming the joke. My friends told me they couldn’t wait for my speech before each year’s assembly, after each assembly said they loved it, but that did not translate into enough votes to get on the council.

So my 10th grade year, in the election for what would be my 11th grade year, I went through the routine but when I didn’t get elected, I didn’t care because I was already planning on being an exchange student and not being at Kearney High School anyway.

However, during my 11th grade year, when I was in Australia, I knew I had to run one more campaign to complete my streak for my Senior Year. I stayed after school at Alstonville High School and used their art classroom to make my poster the best one ever. I recorded my speech on a cassette tape recorder. That speech mostly consisted of having my Australian friends basically say “G’Day Mates, Vote for Todd” and a reason why. I sent my poster and my cassette tape to Scott Francis, my best friend from pre-school, who also was my campaign manager. He hung my poster in the cafeteria the week of the election and he played my cassette tape on his boom box into the microphone during the assembly.

During those years, international telephone calls were incredibly expensive. And, because I was on the other side of the world, on a different day, telephone calls home occurred every other Sunday at a set time. Like clockwork.

So when I got a telephone call from my Mom on a Thursday evening, completely out of the normally scheduled routine, the first thing that entered my head was that there was an emergency at home. However, when I got to the phone and said hello, I could tell Mom was quite excited, not sad. I clearly remember her telling me that after school a group of my closest friends had come over to tell her personally that I had been elected to the student council! I had made it!

Maybe it was never giving up. Maybe it was my reminder to my classmates during my speech that I truly wanted to be on student council and had been asking for their votes since 7th grade. Or most likely, it was the cool accents of my Aussie friends saying things like “vote for Todd, he’s a pretty cool bloke for a Yank” that helped me make it onto Student Council.

The reason for this non-photo related background story is to set up how I met Tim Skrastins. He had grown up in Aurora, Illinois, and had moved to Kearney in 10th grade, but we didn’t meet each other in 10th grade. And we didn’t meet in 11th grade, because I was Down Under. But while I was running my campaign from Australia, he ran a more traditional campaign, and was elected to the student council as well.

The first week school, my senior year, when we had our first student council meeting, he walked straight up to me, shook his hand out and said “I have been waiting months to meet you, since the election back in April, because I could’t wait to meet the guy who gave his campaign speech from Australia! I’m Tim.”

During our senior year together, we started a DJ business, Two Man Jam, and made money as the dance disc jockeys for Kearney High school dances, for other high school dances, for the Riverdale prom, and even at a few college fraternity parties. It was very cool to be in high school and DJ’ing in the basements of college fraternities!

Also during our senior year of high school, Tim began our careers at Bob’s Superstore Camera Department. During our college years, we lived together in The Dome the other guys in the Dome Crew. As our photography skills grew, and people hired us to do photography jobs, we created T&T Photography. I always let him think the first T was for him.

Another thing we shared in common was our love of road trips! Those road trips began in high school, and began with trips to Lincoln, a two-hour drive, to see Nebraska Cornhusker football games. Then we went to Omaha, a three-hour drive, to the Rockbrook Camera store. In May, we took another road trip back to Omaha, two weeks before we graduated, for the Nebraska State High School Track and Field Championships at Omaha’s Burke High School.

On that road trip, we were loaded with the top-of-the-line cameras, lenses, filters, flashes, the works, from Bob’s Superstore. We told Mayor Ron it would be a training trip and we would do our best to learn as much about the cameras as possible, and we did. We treated that experience like we were at the Olympics, trying to outdo each other and every other professional newspaper photographer from across the state who was there.

I was on the yearbook staff so I was able to get a press pass to get onto the field during the two-day track meet. Perhaps in another book I’ll tell the story of how Tim and I made that Press Pass into two Press Passes, so we both could get onto the track and field.

Our road trips had become epic! Our Dome Crew roommate Kyle was from Omaha, and we made so many road trips to his parents house I lost track. Sometimes we road tripped there just ro raid his parents fridge and pantry. Skratch and I had road tripped to Ames, Iowa, and to Denver, Colorado, to see U2’s Zoo TV tour. Of course were loaded with cameras and telephoto zoom lenses from Bob’s for those concerts.

We had road tripped twice in two months to Houston, a 14 hour drive! The Dome Crew had road tripped twice to Detroit, Michigan, an 18-hour adventure, where Skratch’s parents had moved to, in order to watch the NFL’s Detroit Lions play football on Thanksgiving Day. We saw Barry Sanders play on the field and John Madden and Pat Summeral broadcasting from their booth.

All anyone in the Dome had to ask was “whose up for a road trip?” and whoever was in the house might just drop whatever they were doing and go. Anything to get out of Kearney, for any reason!

Now for the story behind this photo, “Chicago Cultural Center.” This photograph was straight street photojournalism.

In the summer of 1994, after our road trip to Houston for Arlen’s wedding, Tim wanted to get some things from his family’s home in Aurora Colorado.

He asked me if I wanted to road trip with him. I said absolutely, and that we should actually make it into a monster road trip, and go on to Chicago, and then all the way up to visit my Aunt Les, Uncle Joe, and cousins Jeff and Curt Patrick in Marquette, Michigan, clear at the northern tip of the Upper Peninsula.

In addition to Skratch and me being practically inseparable, both of us were inseparable from our cameras.

We were interested in taking pictures of everything from ladybugs on blades of grass to the largest skyscrapers in Chicago.

Our day in Chicago was remarkable - it was almost like a real-life version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. We walked around downtown, drove along the Michigan Mile, ate pizza by the slice and hotdog’s from street vendors, rode the “L”, the elevated commuter trains; and went to Wrigley Field to watch the Cub’s play baseball.

We had everything but a Ferrari and a parade.

Skratch and I were walking around downtown, and with the soaring skyscrapers and amazing architecture, the noise of traffic and honking cars, people everywhere - it seemed like more people than the whole state of Nebraska, the smells of the city, the food vendors, the sight of elevated trains roaring by, flocks of pigeons flying by —— the sights and sounds were exhilarating, and I was taking pictures of it all. This was definitely nothing like Kearney, Nebraska, and I wanted to remember all of the details.

As we walked toward Millennium Park in the middle of the downtown, we had to stop for a red light.

Pointing our cameras up at the skyscrapers, down the streets, capturing the light and shadows created by the buildings, we didn’t stop taking pictures.

As the light turned green and the beep for visually impaired began beeping, and we began to step into the crosswalk, I turned to my right and saw this scene and the juxtaposition of this homeless man sleeping near the entrance of the Chicago Cultural Center.

Everything about this scene is about as different from my hometown as you can get.

The older I’ve gotten, the more I have come to not only appreciate but love my hometown. Kearney is small, quiet and safe. While I realize poverty exists everywhere, Kearney does not have many, if any, homeless people.

To see a homeless person sleeping like this in the middle of the day was a shock to me. The contrast between his situation and the text on the sign was stark.

In a split-second I pushed my shutter button, exposed three frames of film, click-click-click, and caught up with Tim who was already halfway across the street. I didn’t give this moment a second thought as I was already looking ahead at the next part of the city that didn’t look anything like home. Skratch and I were full of adrenaline and excitement and had a full day and a full trip to get too.

When we got home after our trip, there was a lot of film to develop and a lot of images to look through. Which was done by using a loupe, like a magnifying glass, to look at the negatives on a light table.

When I came across this image, I barely remembered even taking it. After all, we had photos of the city, Wrigley Field - home of the Cubs, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior… but there was something about this frame that spoke to me.

Even though the man was sleeping, this photograph had life, it had energy. There was nothing planned about this, it was completely spontaneous. The lines are not straight up and down because I was hand-holding my camera and about to step off a curb and walk across a busy city street.

The composition is nearly perfect though. The off-kilter lines, in the brick and mortar, in the edges of the sign, in the platform the man is laying on all lead the viewer’s eye directly to the subject.

There are many details of the building the represent elegance: the architecture of the stones and the polished, mirror-like border, the elegant sign, and except for a few scuff marks on the corner of the building, a well-kept and orderly scene.

Contrast that with the details of the man: work boots with no laces, ripped jeans that don’t appear to be of the fashionable-deliberately-ripped variety popular these days, no visible possessions other than a Styrofoam cup.

Again, this is how I saw him in the two or three seconds I was there, so I didn’t pose him. However, the fact that his arm blocks his face protects his identity and perhaps, dignity. This wasn’t done on purpose by me when I took the picture. This definitely falls in the category of “a happy accident” for me.

After emerging from the darkroom with an 8x10 inch print, and showing it to Tim, I loved his reaction and remarks and still remember it today, 30 years later.

“Whoa!" he said. “Where was that?!? I never saw this!”

When I recounted how it happened he simply shook his head and said “Dude, this is excellent,” which made me feel fantastic!

This image made it into my portfolio. I matted and framed a print, and, as you can see, I had begun titling and signing my photographs.

What makes this image extra-special to me is that a few months later, when I was in Denmark, I would sell this photograph to a magazine named “Chili”. They were doing a story about homelessness in America.

I think it was Pernille who introduced me to the magazine editor, a friend of hers, as her exchange student friend from America that she met in Australia.

I showed him my portfolio, because I showed everyone my portfolio. I was, after all, backpacking through Europe with my camera.

He purchased the photo, I gave him the print, and in that instant, I became an INTERNATIONAL FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER!

Sound the trumpets, drop the confetti!!

This is the image that I hung my hat on, that of an international freelance photographer, that I created my entire identity around.

I am proud of everything about this image. I loaded the film with my bulk loader. I was with my best friend road tripping, exploring the world, having a blast, taking pictures. Even though we were side-by-side, I saw something that he didn’t and got a picture of it and impressed him. I developed the film. I printed the print. I put it in my portfolio. I took my portfolio out into the world and showed it to anyone who would look at it.

And I sold it to a European magazine!

My identity was being formed and forged through photography, and I loved it!

•••••

Post Script: Today, when a person takes a picture with their phone, there is data embedded that will reveal the exact location on earth and the exact time of day the photo was created. In 1994 this not only did not exist, it was not even in my imagination or the realm of possibility to me.

A couple of years ago, if someone asked me where this location is, I would not have had any idea. My only starting point would be to try and locate the Chicago Cultural Center, To try and recreate the route Tim and I took that day as we walked around the city would be a near-impossible feat.

However, in 2017, I began working for News Link, and in 20XX I was working on one of my accounts for the South Shore Commuter train. This train runs from South Bend, Indiana to Millennium Station in downtown Chicago. My day started in Michigan City, Indiana, where I was gathering news and taking pictures for their employee newsletter. Someone suggested I go downtown to interview some ticket agents for the newsletter, so I rode the train there.

When I was done with the interviews in Millenium Station, I decided to walk around the city and, what else, take some pictures.

I rode the escalator up from the underground train station to the surface street level. I walked half a block and froze. I was looking directly at the Chicago Cultural Center sign! I was standing in the exact spot I had been in 25?? years earlier.

My heart stopped, then skipped a beat.

I could barely believe it. “Amazing,” I said to myself in awe. “Life is simply Amazing.”

/////