Edmund Slapczynski

Aug 5th, 2017. Portrait of a man poor in possessions but rich in dignity. I met Edmund on the escalator leaving the subway at Universal metro station, near Universal Studios. I'd just come from a beard battle in North Hollywood, having left early with a hollow feeling. I intended to go downtown to shoot, but a little voice told me to get off the train at Universal, and there I saw a smallish man carrying what might have been his worldly possessions. It was the beard that struck me. Compared to many of the beards I'd just photographed, it seemed somehow cleaner, more honest. There was something about his face I needed to photograph. I asked him if I could, and he hesitated at first, but then relented, a little embarrassed. He said he never gave interviews, then set about telling me stories about sleeping rough and how he'd been snubbed by Lew Wasserman. He didn't want to go into the details. He said he's been a cinematographer. I don't know if that's true. The light was awful, around 5 O'Clock. Still bright and contrasty. I took several shots as he told me his stories, and the hat shaded his eyes while the sun blew out the bottom half of his face. I was using a fuji 16mm, f/1.4, iso 200, 1/8000 of a second, but I couldn't get the effect I wanted. I didn't want to annoy him by telling him to move here and there for better light, so I talked and gradually walked us over to a tree with dappled light. He kept talking, and I took a few more shot. It still wasn't working. And then, as he was remembering something, he looked off as people do, and the shade finally lifted from his eyes and the Gods of focus were kind. He wanted me to know his name and spelled it several times, just in case I won some sort of award. He wanted to make sure it was spelled correctly.