Beautiful Man

Unforgettable Support

Long ago, when I was majoring in photography at Columbia College Chicago, I met a young white female student who I thought was photogenic. We were casual classmates, always friendly to each other in the context of school although we were not very close or familiar with each other's lives beyond photography. However, I wanted to capture her unpretentious but undeniable loveliness.

One day, I asked if she would let me take her picture. I knew that she had seen some of my photojournalism and a few of my portraits. She said yes and soon I took a few simple pictures of her sitting in an interior school stairwell where I thought the lighting was right. Within a couple of days, I processed the black and white film, chose the best one and printed an 8 x 10 in the darkroom to give to her. I kept a second copy for myself.

The next time I saw her, I gave her a copy of the picture. She looked as wonderful in the photo as she did in real life. She instantly liked it and told me so. I thought it was a good portrait as well, and I kept a copy of it for my portfolio.

We were always kind and understanding in our brief interactions with each other. Somehow, we each knew what was most important about the other one. Nevertheless, we were students and we knew that we wouldn't see a lot of each other unless we had another class together. We were moving through people and life as occurs in one's early twenties.

In addition, I lived in the city in a room rented by the week in YMCA on the South Side. I wasn't sure where she lived but I sensed that it was most likely in a much more white area, probably on the North or Northwest side of the city, with her family or maybe even with roommates.

The semester was almost over and we were coming to the end of the main reason we encountered each other at all. She saw me in the stairwell once again and told me that she had something to give to me. It was a simple note:

"Marc, you are a beautiful man. Stay terrific, always. Thanks."

I really meant it when I thanked her. Although it was a small gesture, I was so grateful that she took the time to tell me what she did on a piece of paper that she had written with a colored marker and embellished the words with a different color. It was amazing to me because I knew that she was telling me more than that she liked the photo I took of her. She was saying that she thought I was a really good person. It was not in a way where either of us expected to start a relationship with the other one. But she let me know that my value went beyond my skill as a photographer. To her, it was the person behind the camera that was even more special. She let me know that she saw in me someone who was beautiful, too.

my school ID

Columbia College Chicago

I received the note from her in 1975, decades ago. After she gave it to me, on the last day of the semester, we went our separate ways and we never saw each other again. Yet I have always kept her note to me. It was true support because I knew she was sincere. She took the time not only to say it but to put it in writing and give it to me to keep. She was also saying "don't change." To her, I was already a great guy.

So few people have ever said such simple words of support to me.

another version I created of the note given to me by the female student

Columbia College

Chicago

1975

Support in College

I did receive support from others in addition to the female student who gave me the note, but it was always infrequent and rarely explicit. The strongest early support I received for my creative works was from my photography instructor at Columbia College Chicago, who seemed to recognize something unique in my images. He compared me to a famous photographer who worked in the early to mid-1900s. He praised one of my photos in front of the other students. It was my first nude self-portrait which was in response to a class assignment on self-portraits (I was the only one who presented a nude photo although it was discreet). They all thought it was the best in class. (I have written about the experience in a different essay entitled Without Cover that appears in another journal.)

Support from Companies

Around the same time, I also received major support from a manager, Barry N., in the Public Relations and Advertising Department of a corporation where I was soon promoted to staff photographer and management training audio-visual technician. (The job is described in an article entitled Borg-Warner, which appears in an autobiographical collection of essays entitled MarcLife.) He gave me assignments and purchased my photos for various company publications. It was how I became more seriously published when I was still living in Chicago.

Both my instructor and the manager at the corporation encouraged me and let me know that they thought my work was often far better than the images produced by many other students and photographers.

Support also came from my clients in publishing companies in New York simply because of their buying my photos. If the images weren't good enough and didn't provide what they needed, my photos would never have been purchased. In the publishing industry, paying money is expected to be sufficient support, especially when all the companies were trying to get something for nothing (and my clients were definitely no different in this regard). To them, it was just business. Support was assumed without it being stated beyond a one word description of a picture or series of pictures as "cool", "great", or "excellent".

Support from Relatives, Friends and Coworkers

On the other hand, I have received little to no support for my extensive photographs and writings from most relatives and the majority of my friends and coworkers. Few of them have actually spent five or ten minutes with anything I have created. I write for myself knowing almost all of them don't really don't care at all. It is a good thing that I don't depend on praise (or false praise) for being creative.

However, there is an exception when relatives, coworkers, friends and neighbors liked photos I took of them either on location or in my studio. I suppose it is natural when someone directly gets something nice out of it. But it was qualified support. They were complimenting the photos I took — of them.

Some who actually do take brief look at my work or my journals will tell me that I am a great visualist and writer, but they do not see 95% to 99% of my work because I know that much of it is too strong for them or unappealing or time consuming or all of the above. It is not really possible for them to give support about images and words they have never seen. I don't really make a lot of it available, for several reasons, but especially because I know them and what they like, and I won't ask them to look at images or read essays that I know they have no interest in.

Value

When many relatives and some of my more casual friends say that they value me, they are really valuing my generosity, caring and support of themselves (especially financially), or my agreement with them on various topics and similar experiences. This is common. They don't know the real person underneath the qualities they like in me. They don't know my inner core. They have never and would never proclaim that I am a "beautiful man" as my classmate did because their view of me is so limited and I am taken for granted. I know that they would likely even have issues with who I really am.

Support and Love

In rare cases, support can also be part of love. There were a few people in my life who gave both love and support to me at the same time. Those who did were my mother and my girlfriends.

Male friends don't usually think of love in the context of their friendships with other males. The love of most male friends comes with specific rules and conditions that love must almost never be spoken of or expressed to another male (so you don't even know if it actually existed at all). It must be a masculine, societally acceptable version of love. Men express a defined, narrow kind of love and support when they are on the same team and win a game, or when they are drunk at a bar (preferably with female strippers), or when they give each other a loan for a car or house, or when they lose a team member and are in mourning.

Otherwise, men's love and support, which must always allow for competition, is constrained. In the past, I actually had a few very liberal male friends who broke the rules and who I knew loved me or who they thought I was. It still came without the support of a large part of me, i.e., my creativity, in which they were not interested. It was a sort of half-love that was forever incomplete.

I did have one male friend who loved me and who I loved without such restraints and who was one of the most unforgettable people I have ever known. I was devastated when he passed away in 1987 and I still miss him.

Ultimately, if you know what actual support is, you know that it is not just about what a person does for you or what a person gives to you. Real support and love is not temporary or superficial. It is not taking someone for granted, or worse, taking advantage of something they have to offer. It is a deeper connection between two people who give time and energy to each others whole lives, freely. It arises not only from genuine interest but also the desire to always have them and what they do in your life.

Real support and love makes itself known and is always there, openly and without prohibitions. I once told someone that they should never just tell me that they loved me, they should show me. It is when you can tell someone how you feel about who they are in their entirety, including what they do, that all aspects of them are beautiful. You follow it up with actions such as learning about and embracing the entire person. Support and love is like the light of the sun shining down on two people.

_______

1P75XX

Beautiful Man: Unforgettable Support