Jerry Mann

Michael Bruno backs the best bakery west of the Atlantic. (Yes,...

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0500

Michael Bruno backs the best bakery west of the Atlantic. (Yes, the ocean.)

Those who know me would be amazed to hear I dragged my derriere out of bed at 4 am to make it to the corner of State and Broad in Cuyahoga Falls by 5 am. I was assigned a portrait of Mike Bruno, the owner of the Golden Goose Bakery. This is an outtake from the shoot (for Cleveland Magazine… look for the article to be published in the January issue, City Life section). If every early morning promised to be so scrumptious, I’d have no trouble getting up early!

Everything is fresh-baked that morning (Mike gets up even earlier than I had to). The chocolate croissant melted in my mouth. (My wife almost strangled me when I only brought her one!) I gave an almond croissant to a friend and he started making moaning sounds. He loved it. My mom and brother each got an almond-apricot pastry and ate them immediately.

Yes, after waking up at 4 am I bought pastry for everyone I was going to see that day, and hand delivered it… then went to another shoot, then did some home maintenance, got my tires balanced and took a friend out to the movies for his birthday and got a beer afterward and made it home by 1 am. Wow, 21 hours straight!

Maybe I should’ve stayed awake and gone back to the bakery for more!

“From a Farmer,” 2006. After Sally and I moved to...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:40:00 -0400

“From a Farmer,” 2006.

After Sally and I moved to Cleveland Heights, some friends led us down the hill into East Cleveland to visit a farmers market. Driving there, as we passed through sadly neglected neighborhoods, we had our doubts. But when we walked into the Coit Road Farmers Market we were excited to find a haven for local food sources. Going to this market week after week ever since, we received our education in buying and eating local.

I am thankful that farm markets are again the cool thing, and I hope the message is getting through that we need to get our food from local sources. Supporting our farmers through a neighborhood market is the best way to go. I have been donating my services to the Coit Market since 2006, documenting their events, the people and the food.

I am donating the above photo as a raffle item at their first-ever benefit event, “A Taste of Autumn 2009,” being held this Monday night at the Beachland Ballroom. If anyone is looking for a fun way to spend an evening for a good cause, I would recommend buying a ticket.

Featuring several local chefs who will prepare dishes from locally acquired food, the evening will be MC’d by Fred Griffith, a local food guy in his own right. There will be raffles, special guests and awards and old time music by the Coit Road Ramblers, a eclectic group of musicians that have been fiddling around at the market for a while now.

In operation since 1932, the Coit Road Farmers Market has never strayed from its mission: bringing exclusively locally-farmed food to people in the city. Farmers have been delivering their apples, corn, melons and tomatoes to the corner of Coit and Woodworth for 77 years, all the while watching America shift away from their closest source of fresh food: the farms that surround their communities.

The Coit Market, which stays open all year round, serves a community that is struggling to pull itself up by its bootstraps. Being the first farmers market in Northeast Ohio that offers their farmers the ability to sell their products to food stamp recipients, Coit Market has greatly increased farmers’ outreach to people who find it hard to find fresh, healthy and nutritious food.

They have a very cool community garden on their property, and also leases plots to urban farmers who sell their bounty at the market’s stands. Market manager Kevin Scheuring (AKA The Spice Hound) and I have a plot of hops growing, and have an experimental plot of winter wheat going in the ground this weekend—sounds like the makings for a nice Hefeweizen!

Please consider attending the benefit. It would be a great way to spice up a cold October evening. All of the great things at the Coit Market that are giving the community hope are dependent on the generosity of volunteers and donations. To order tickets, click here or visit the Coit Market’s by clicking this link. And come on down to the market while the harvest is still in!

www.jerrymann.com

Wedges of all kinds eventually split the impossible split. So, I...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:51:00 -0400

Wedges of all kinds eventually split the impossible split.

So, I guess this is another “dream the impossible dream” post. Yeah, you know the story, you’re feelin’ blue and you say “fugedabowdit” (forget about it). You walk outside and start raking some leaves, or pushing some dirt around, or splitting a twisted 14-inch cherry log. And you had pulled the log off someone’s tree lawn a year ago because it was saying to you, “firewood,” or “fireside bench,” or “I dare you to lift me into the back of your pickup truck.” And your back recovered from that, and now you are learning why the arboriculturist left it on the tree lawn in one huge chunk.

The wedges—steel and wood alike—are getting wedged. Now one is stuck so tight the others must come to its rescue. And along the way you notice the split is running around the log’s circumference and you won’t have a flat bench, but a conversation piece with a 90-degree twist, or firewood.

You are learning why some logs are so hard to split that it’s not worth trying. You knew it would be tough, but you tried it anyway, and now your back, your arms, your hands are paying. And you give up and go in for some water.

You come back out to give up, but must rescue one last wedged wedge. And five minutes later you see the log is giving up. And before you go in for dinner, and after another five mosquito bites, you have two pieces of very twisted cherry. Its not pretty, but you learned a lot along the way.

By the way, happy equinox… everything should be balanced out right about now.

“Reach for the stars!” said the note written with...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:35:00 -0400

“Reach for the stars!” said the note written with bubbly handwriting in my high school yearbook. Written by a cheerleader, no doubt. There I was, in 1982, imagining extending my arm and trying to grab a constellation. It seemed futile, impossible.

That cheer should’ve been slightly less ambitious, more obtainable in a real sense… like, “Jerry, see that fly buzzing around the top of the ceiling? If you put your mind to it, you could snatch him in your hand… just think of the satisfaction you’d glean! Just start with the fly and we’ll take it from there.” Yeah… something a bit more tangible for a kid raised in a subdivision on classic rock and lawnmower fumes. (Even the Round Tuit that Mom gave me didn’t seem to work.)

Through the ups and downs of the past quarter century I’ve figured one thing: DOING is the key to success. Do one thing, and it leads to another Done thing. One success builds on the last. You get used to Doing and suddenly being lazy seems sort of boring.

As a freelancer its easy to get in a rut, especially when most of my daytime conversations are with the dog. One recent journal entry was sounding pretty grim. I was struck by how many 40-somethings I’ve heard of keeling over (see previous entry). I was comparing myself to all the other photographers in the world. I was thinking about how I never reached for the stars like the cheerleader said to. “Sink or swim,” I scrawled. “I could croak tomorrow. Everyone is dying at late-40’s. I am not immune. Die Happy or Sad. Heaven or Hell.” (Oh jiminy, do I hear an intervention at the door?)

Well, the writing helped, because the next day I DID something. I published a website that was more than a hobbled-together affair. For years I had made excuses to everyone as to why my website was not happening. I finally got my hands on a template that allowed me to put it together—I’ll save the tech talk…basically the template is a godsend. Check out my new site here!

So I’m all happy about that for a day or two, then I get this email from Photoshelter (the web site I used while jerrymann.com was “under construction”). I was chosen as one of 20 photographers to be featured on their homepage in a slideshow in June! I spent the next 3 days clicking on their site, waiting for my one photo to show up (I’ve never won a photo contest before). My 30 days of fame were extended into July a few extra days, but have finally run out. But you can always see my galleries at my Photoshelter page: click here.

So that was nice… I then decided if I could accomplish those things, I could certainly move the 400 pound sandstone slab from our back steps. That’s what the video is about. They did it with the pyramids, so…. That turned out to be the easy part. I spent the next week digging out roots and clay soil, laying under the steps to repair the masonry (yeah, underneath. In the creepy, dark area), and rebuilding the brickwork under the bottom step. The main goal was to relevel the sandstone, and that was accomplished 2 hours and 27 minutes before our Solstice Party began.

One Did leads to another Done. The next amazing feat was taking our yard from construction zone to party zone. Never fear! Aim high! Reach for the stars! Or that little old fly.

www.jerrymann.com

My work as featured at Photoshelter’s website in June. I...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:34:38 -0400

My work as featured at Photoshelter’s website in June. I was with a world-class group: other shooters were from Brussels, Beijing, Dublin, London, etc.

On a Train. In memory of Ramon Owens, a fellow OU Phodog. Obit -...

Thu, 28 May 2009 10:25:07 -0400

On a Train.

In memory of Ramon Owens, a fellow OU Phodog.

Obit - Photos - Blog

Chasing Madame Curie. May 12, 2009

Fri, 22 May 2009 10:20:00 -0400

Chasing Madame Curie. May 12, 2009

John Ranally cuts a rebar support as he frees the Madame Curie...

Wed, 20 May 2009 10:13:00 -0400

John Ranally cuts a rebar support as he frees the Madame Curie bronze from its plaster mold. May 4, 2009.

John Ranally of The Studio Foundry pours molten bronze into the...

Thu, 14 May 2009 05:32:00 -0400

John Ranally of The Studio Foundry pours molten bronze into the plaster investment mold of Madame Curie, a sculpture by Timothy Riffle of Brownhoist Studios. May 2, 2009.

“Airplane,” pinhole camera self-portrait. From the...

Sat, 09 May 2009 07:59:18 -0400

“Airplane,” pinhole camera self-portrait.

From the series, “Hands: Recollection of Dad,” 1996.

Christian Klotz, January, 2008. Pinhole camera image.

Wed, 06 May 2009 01:00:00 -0400

Christian Klotz, January, 2008. Pinhole camera image.

Self-portrait, September 2007.

Tue, 05 May 2009 01:00:00 -0400

Self-portrait, September 2007.

If you squint you can see Dick Feagler in this image. Really....

Fri, 01 May 2009 20:45:00 -0400

If you squint you can see Dick Feagler in this image. Really. Okay, not really.

One day a while back, I dragged a digital camera’s raw file into a word processing program. Yeah, yeah, I know… No, I don’t know why I did this…

First, I was surprised that the 8.2 MB photo actually opened in the simple Text Edit program. The “image” was displayed not in shadows and highlights and colors, but in characters. I pressed the down arrow on my keyboard, scanning through the seemingly endless string of letters, numbers and symbols, and noticed that the scroll bar on the side of the window was barely moving. I depressed “page down” and the scroll bar barely sped up, but the characters kept flying by. This was a huge text document, and I felt like I was peering into the eyes of a digital beast.

This was about as hard-core as digital photography could be. I’ve groaned about having to understand what the histogram means. I’ve moaned as I labored while creating a clipping path in Photoshop. And I’m not the only one suffering: I sent a link to a colleague, the topic being archiving our digital images. It discussed saving native raw files as .DNG files, embedding .xmp side cars, verification of copies by implication, migration to optical media, and double dng-only workflow, among other asset management considerations. Apparently the “boom” I heard a few minutes later was my friend’s head exploding all the way out in Massachusetts. Now, I’m not sure I want to comprehend how all this information translates into a photo.

I imagine that if I printed the pages of characters, taped it together and stood way far back, I could see a photograph. I tried selecting some of the characters and told the computer to speak them. It sounded like a radio station ID at the top of the hour, in Cantonese and Pig Latin combined. continued …

Eye of the Beast, detail. … There’s an antidote for...

Fri, 01 May 2009 20:40:00 -0400

Eye of the Beast, detail.

… There’s an antidote for this virtual reality of sitting in a squeaky chair staring at the flat screen pushing the mouse around. It’s called getting out. Walking down the street and watching objects pass by in true 3D. Grabbing an unidentifiable object off the ground and feeling it’s weight, texture and temperature. Chopping wood. Climbing trees. Catching a baseball. Hitting it back. Going out, watching actual people, speaking to them with air as conduit, and hearing music emanate from body to instrument to ear.

This got me thinking about when I used to thread my film, squeegee my negatives and ferrocyanide my prints. What ever happened to pulling a Polaroid, finding the notch and calculating bellows extension? I miss spotting a print, putting the loupe down on a transparency and being able to hit the inside of my camera with canned air.

I really felt alive when I created my pinhole camera self-portrait series back in 1996. It was a response to my father’s passing, and I used the ultra-slow pinhole process to meditate on life and photography. continued …

“Bicycle Repair,” pinhole camera self-portrait....

Fri, 01 May 2009 20:35:00 -0400

“Bicycle Repair,” pinhole camera self-portrait.

From the series, “Hands: Recollection of Dad,” 1996.

… The process, which included the obligatory Quaker Oatmeal can, was no less complicated than digital imaging, just easier for me to grasp.

I placed a custom-machined brass pinhole up front and epoxied a custom tripod mount to the bottom. For instant gratification I would shoot Polaroid, and for quality I wanted 4x5. Modifying the lid to take Type 55 without a 545 back complicated things. So I rigged the film plane with guides and a film clip at the bottom to allow me pull the dark slide, and side flaps that fold in and prevent negative buckling when reinserting the slide.

Plus the usual gobs of black velvet flocking and camera tape.

In the end, the image created with my pinhole camera is just a two-dimensional representation of reality, same as what the digital camera outputs. But getting there, well… that’s where the real fun was.

See below for the real Dick Feagler.

There’s easy photo pickens, for industry-crazed phodogs...

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:59:00 -0400

There’s easy photo pickens, for industry-crazed phodogs like me, down in Cleveland’s Industrial Flats. My recent ramblings down by the river with a friend from Germany reminded me of how much I love that “ugly” part of our city. Instead of promoting just the new and clean Cleveland (aka CLE+), we need to also market our vintage and rusty heritage, what I like to call “CLE-.” Last night I spewed out the following opinion, sort like the steel mill used to stink up downtown…

The Cleveland Metal Hall of Fame

This past weekend Cleveland celebrated rock-n-roll. Metallica may have been inducted into the Rock Hall, but Cleveland’s true metal hall of famers are down in the Flats. And we better look fast.

Our iconic lift bridges, crossing the Cuyahoga, may end up as the last links to our past industrial might, sadly standing alone in the Flats. The powers that be will continue to tear down our historic mills and machinery. They destroyed the west side steel mill for a mall. They took down smoke stacks that stood sentinal. All of the Hulett Ore Unloaders that faithfully welcomed boats to our shores for a hundred years, and could have proudly stood another hundred, have been removed from their perches. Of the battery of four Huletts on Whiskey Island, two now lie unprotected, their parts rusting and sinking into the earth, while our leaders ignore their promise to preserve the Huletts as a monument to our ingenuity.

Why Cleveland strives to break the bond to it’s industrial heritage is up for discussion. Does it remind us of our dirty past, when our river burned? Is it the embarrassment of being perceived as a Rust Belt city? Or is the old cliche “out with the old” being taken too literally? We cannot hide our past, we cannot escape being in the rust belt, so we may as well stop throwing out the old—and make the most of it.

Other cities have found positive ways to make Industrial Archaelogy a cool thing. In Birmingham, Alabama, residents saved their Sloss Furnaces, and now their National Landmark hosts tours, concerts and metal arts classes. In Seattle, they cleaned up an industrial site, preserved a few cool elements and created Gas Works Park on their lakefront. And New York City managed to preserve their old overhead transit line and make it into a public greenspace, the High Line, opening this summer. And Germany… don’t even get me started on Germany! Just click on this link to see a cool industrial park—like no industrial park we know around here.

Cleveland still has a chance to be a Museum to Industry, capitalizing on our past. Future generations could learn about our history, if it isn’t hidden. Like the lift bridges rusting under the weather, our Industrial Archaeology could last another hundred years, teaching generations about how we got here—if we would stop sweeping it under the rug.

I have available a 20 page photo booklet which includes images of Cleveland landmarks, including the Flats. Contact me if interested.

Images created for Joyful Noise Music School, a non-profit on...

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:31:00 -0400

Images created for Joyful Noise Music School, a non-profit on Cleveland’s West Side that provides free music lessons to kids.

First Day of Spring!

Confession: Every now and then the job comes along where my motto is “Take the picture, cash the check.” Many freelancers will agree that some jobs you just want to get over with and move on. That’s always a sad day for us sole-proprietors who chose to “make a living doing what we love to do.”

Then, there are the jobs we take because we know it’s just the right thing to do, where money is secondary and we just enjoy the work. A friend, a skilled artisan, recently told me he’d take a cut in pay if that would get a special project rolling, rather than see an important idea never be realized.That’s loving what you do.

I quoted the non-profit Joyful Noise a very friendly rate, and figured that alone was my contribution to helping a great community organization. On shoot day I was struck by the beauty of the bond between student, instructor and musical instrument, and I gradually came under a spell as I went from one practice room to the next. At the end of a few hours I was ready to shoot more, but everyone was going home. I rolled through the images on my memory card and could see I had created a solid body of work.

More than just offering a non-profit rate, my contribution to the cause was putting my heart into my photography. I remembered that when I love what I’m doing, it shows through in my images. And I wished that every shoot, whether paying high or low, would inspire me like that day’s had.

Joyful Noise is having a benefit on Friday, April 3. A video I created of the students in lessons and recitals will be shown at the event. Sounds like a fun time… interested? Click this link to get more info, or just to see their website.

Chef Tim O’Malley making Irish Soda Bread, and the bread I...

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:49:00 -0400

Chef Tim O’Malley making Irish Soda Bread, and the bread I made today!

Happy St. Pat’s, everyone!

Back in late October I was running around town photographing chefs revealing their secret family recipes for December Cle Mag’s “Classic Eats.” Besides shooting/eating Matzo Balls and Stuffed Cabbage, I also went to the West Side Irish Club where Tim O’Malley demonstrated his Grandma O’Malley’s Irish Soda Bread.

For a change I picked up my Hasselblad on this assignment. It was a re-revelation, if you will: smelling the film as I loaded it, triggering that shutter, feeling that mirror flop up, cranking the film through. I almost forgot about the viewfinder blacking out after an exposure! And seeing! A large, bright and crisp image that I could see to focus, to be sure. It’s a tactile experience that all photographers should have: a medium format camera, loaded with film, firmly planted on a tripod.

Anyone who eats should have the tactile experience of kneading dough and smelling the bread in the oven. The simplicity of this recipe attracted me, and this afternoon, between image processing, conference calls and dog walks, I managed to knead the ingredients together into a glorious rendition of Grandma O’Malley’s bread.

Dick Feagler in the easy chair, after 38 years in the newspaper...

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:45:00 -0500

Dick Feagler in the easy chair, after 38 years in the newspaper business.

I recently photographed Dick Feagler, the recently-retired columnist of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He knew the routine, “You’ll drag your equipment in, set up for 45 minutes, take a bunch of shots.” It was good to know he’d give me that much time!

I was armed with a list of requests—the magazine hoped to see Feagler dressed down in a bathrobe and slippers, with an old afghan draped over his lap. Feagler may have given up his column, but he still has his TV show and is going to write more books. He wasn’t having any of that “washed-up old guy” stuff. As he settled into his easy chair I could see the setting was perfect for shooting a retiring veteran journalist. I finally requested stocking feet, and that was all we needed. As Dick peered over yesterday’s paper, I could see the PD’s tribute article to him on the back. I coaxed a few trademark Feagler smirks and we had the shot.

From the moment I arrived the Feagler’s treated me like family, offering me coffee and beer. I started with the coffee. Later, I accepted the beer when Dick and Julie invited me to stay awhile. As the sun made it’s way around the cozy den of their home, we discussed life, love and politics. It felt like time stood still. This rates as one of my happiest shoots ever. Here’s a link to the article in this month’s Cleveland Magazine.