I have a print of the photo on the far right, and it’s a photograph of my father, Wallace Berman, and his girlfriend at the time, Loree Foxx. The picture on the left and middle (same photo) is my father, taken the same day as the one on the right, but I haven’t the foggiest idea who the other woman is. And I don’t know who the photographer is. So, two mysteries are here; anyone I can ask is dead. Which reminds me I’m the last of the line or the final member of this clan.
Tempo Music Shop was located on Hollywood Blvd in what is East Hollywood. The building doesn’t exist, but it is now a parking lot. Tempo Music Shop was a record store devoted to BeBop Jazz. The store was owned by Ross Russell, who also had a record label, Dial Records. It’s an essential label for Jazz but also released 20th-century classical music, such as John Cage, Berg, Bartok, and Schoenberg. In other words, it is the perfect mid-century modernist record label. Wallace did the cover for an anthology of Jazz recordings called Bebop Jazz for Dial featuring Charlie Parker. It may be the first album that Parker appeared on, and it was the first debut of my father’s work as an artist.
The photo above is Robert, my Uncle Don Morand’s live-in boyfriend during the early to mid-1960s. Sometime after they broke up, Robert died from cancer, and I was very sad to hear of his death. His personality fits perfectly with the photographs above. He had a Jean-Paul Belmondo touch, and if my memory serves me correctly, he was a student at U.C.L.A. I remember him loving nature, and that is about it, except for his gentleness and kindness to me. Beyond that, he’s a total mystery. People have come and left in my life; it is like they didn’t exist once gone. So, one can imagine my surprise at seeing the photos on eBay above and being identified as photobooth images of my father, Wallace Berman. This and other photographs of my family were sold for $200 on eBay.
It doesn’t bother me that a stranger to me has obtained these photos; they have done so legally, but the oddness of seeing your life (including a picture of me as a child) being in an eBay public auction. I did inform the seller, and he removed the photographs of Robert since they are not Wallace. Luckily, I captured some of the images on sale before the removal from the internet. But I have captured ghosts, and memory is very haunted-like; at least my memories are.
For the past hour, I have been looking at the photograph above. I can see my resemblance to Wallace, mainly in the nose and mouth. It’s close enough to feed on my narcissistic needs. Being a detective, I’m presuming that Loree took the photo above, and this woman took the other picture of Wallace and Loree. The year, I imagine, is 1947. The year BeBop Jazz was released.
These images are precious to me, and I imagine that not too long in the future, they will be lost to the world. I have a strange disconnect with property, such as family photographs. I think it was primarily due to losing my childhood home to a mudslide where I lost everything. That has stayed with me, and the feeling that things and people are not permanent is a given fact. I always lose things and photos, so seeing my past on a consumer platform like eBay is strange.
My late husband, Joe, wrote a book, never published, but I have the draft. One of his paragraphs reminded me of your journal today regarding photographs and the path they travel.
It reads..." Have you ever gone to a resale shop and found one of those old photo album? The pictures got moved around, tossed into a box and end up in a dusty store somewhere miles away from home. Some of the pictures are blurred. Some of the pictures are torn in half. Some pictures might not even make sense. At first glance you might think, 'who are these people?' But as you look more closely through the album a story unfolds. Families. Places. Events. Situations. And time is frozen. Presto. Instant history."
Joe Alt from his book Lemon
moving. Thank you.