A Detroit school girl is captivated by the 16th century bust of a Nigerian queen at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  1979

People

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Cher studies Marie’s x-rays in an operating room in Humana Hospital in Dallas. After her film Mask.she became the spokesperson for the Children’s Craniofacial Association based in Dallas. And in this role, Cher met Marie Matejic, born with neurofibromatosis, a disease that attacks the nerves causing soft tissue tumors, while on tour in Australia. Cher offered corrective surgery in Dallas which Marie and her mother gratefully accepted. December, 1991
In Marie's hospital room Kathryn, Marie's mother, gives Cher a photo book of Australia
Marie and a signed photo of Cher
Plastic surgeon Ian Monroe, talks to Marie, Kathryn (just out of frame), and Cher about the upcoming surgery
Cher encourages Kathryn and a sedated Marie in a pre-op room just before surgery
Marie dozes just before being wheeled into the operating suite
Cher caresses Marie's hand during the intricate and lengthy surgery
In the intensive care unit, Kathryn and Cher wait for Marie to wake up
About 4 weeks after surgery, Marie and Cher walk on the beach in front of her Malibu home
Marie and Cher

Rosa Parks, 82, in her Detroit high-rise apartment, forty years after famously refusing to give up her Montgomery, Alabama bus seat to white man.  This act of defiance led to a 381 day boycott of the Montgomery bus system led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. causing the city to integrate its buses. “ The United States Congress has honored her as “the first lady of civil rights’” and “mother of the freedom movement.”” (Wikipedia). December, 1995

Josephine Jacubowski, 70, a resident of Poletown “all my married life,” 47 years, and a member of Immaculate Conception Church almost that long, is arrested by Detroit police along with another 5 women and 6 men, all long time church members, for occupying the church after the city of Detroit, claiming eminent domain, took possession of the church from the Detroit Archdiocese a month earlier. The city leveled an entire neighborhood, Poletown, 465 acres consisting of 1,176 buildings – homes, apartment buildings, small businesses, restaurants, bars, shops, and light industrial buildings – 3,438 people lost their homes – to make way for a GM Cadillac plant.

Leonard Peltier in his cell in the U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth.  Peltier, of Lakota, Dakota and Anishinaabe descent  was involved in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975.  He was convicted in the killing of 2 FBI agents in a highly controversial trial and was sentenced to 2 life sentences.  Amnesty International, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa and the 14th Dalai Lama were convinced of his innocence and lobbied for clemency, but has been denied parole since being imprisoned in 1977. April, 1992

Robert Redford checking frames in a documentary film he was working on (executive producer and narrator) about Leonard Peltier’s trial that many claim was highly flawed – claims of suppressed evidence, discredited witnesses, etc.)  April,1992

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A Gwich’in Alaskan Native elder in Arctic Village, Alaska ponders the future of his village if oil exploration is allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Sangaralingam Thambu, 38, the manager of the Mojave Desert Mobile Station photographed in the convenience store in May, 2011.  Sanga emigrated from Sri Lanka in 2008 with his wife and 2 children.  In 2018 he bought the Rosamond Liquor and Meat Market in nearby Rosamond, CA which he runs with his wife.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter help construct a Habitat for Humanity house 6 years after returning to Plains, GA from the White House. “I don’t always hold Jimmy’s ladder, said Rosalynn, I hammer too.” May, 1987
Jimmy and Rosalynn running near their home in Plains, GA.
Jimmy and Rosalynn pose in their back yard
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John Sciopu, 67, from Romania, waves his new flag enthusiastically as he along with 523 other foreign born, newly minted citizens pledge allegiance to the United States of America in a special 4th of July naturalization ceremony at Hart Plaza in Detroit.  July 4, 1981

Cindy Kolb, 28, counsels about 350 of Wayne State University’s 500 students with disabilities.  She is confined to a wheelchair by a rare hereditary neuromuscular condition called Wohlfart-Kugelberg-Wellander.  October, 1978

Aretha Franklin, 43, performs at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. She told me that she was mad at me for photographing her with a broken strap on her gown. 1985
Aretha performing
Aretha fishing, a favorite pastime, in the Detroit River
Aretha happily shows me her catch - some Detroit River seaweed.1985

Confused Reagan supporters – in a fall, 1980 Reagan rally in Birmingham, Michigan supporters hold the large letters spelling the candidate’s name backwards, N-A-G-A-E-R.  Fall, 1980

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, in living room of his home in the Chicago area. 1989

I never photographed Princess Diana, but was fortunate to experience the overwhelming love bestowed on her by Londoners and admirers from around the world, in the days around her funeral. Kensington Palace, September 6, 1997.

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Karl Lynn, 88, the last attendant in the last Mt. Clemens bathhouse in the Colonial Hotel in what was once known as The Bath City of America regularly soaks in mineral water baths  and bakes in an electric heat box.  October 1979
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Chris Webber, 20, NBA Rookie of the Year, 5 time NBA All Star and a member of the Naismith Memoria Basketball Hall of Fame on the “court” he learned to play on behind the Detroit home he grew up in and where his parents still live. He was selected #1 overall in the 1993 NBA draft. 1980

While at the University of Michigan, Tom Dolan, 21, won 9 NCAA championships and at the 1996 and 2000 summer Olympics he won 2 Gold Medals and also a Silver.  April, 1996

A truck driver responds to my wave on Interstate 5 between Tacoma and Seattle

Arlene, serves with a smile at Al’s Oasis on Interstate 90 in South Dakota

Mary Sue Walking Eagle, 71, at her family burial plot on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. 2011

Robert E. Finehout, scout leader, at D-Bar-A Boy Scout Ranch in Metamora, Michigan.  1979

Don Johnson receiving eye makeup in the hair and makeup trailer on the set of The Long Hot Summer being filmed in Marshall, Texas.  1985

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An old Bosnian soldier, a veteran of a number of Balkan conflicts, was not killed or sent to a labor camp by the Serbs because of his age, in a refugee camp near Split, Croatia

Annie Johnston, 4, at the Klemensplatz commuter train stop.  Klemensplatz is a suburb of Dusseldorf.  Annie is my granddaughter.

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Jamaica Kincaid is a distinguished Antiguan-American novelist, essayist and passionate gardener who is also Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University.  She is in the sunroom of her North Bennington, VT home.  1997

Mick Jagger performing with the Rolling Stones at the Pontiac (Michigan) Silverdome in 1981.  152,696 fans attended the October 30 and December 1 shows. 1981

Alexander Hall, 11, his sister and parents spent over a month in homeless shelters after losing their brick, 9th Parish New Orleans home and almost all their possessions to Hurricane Katrina. Finally they found a small one bedroom apartment in Jefferson Parish, across the river from New Orleans. Alexander holds a ball, the only toy he managed to salvage, next to a small pile of clothing the family was able to save.  October, 2005

Danny Rolling, 41, also known as the Gainesville Ripper, was convicted of killing 5 college students in Gainesville, Florida in August, 1990.  He was sentenced to death for the 5 murders although he also confessed to killing 3 more in Shreveport, Louisiana. I photographed him in a Florida state prison deathrow in 1995.  He asked his fiancé, who I later photographed,  to give me a copy of the book he wrote and illustrated in minute, shocking, and lurid detail describing each murder from the moment he first saw each victim, to the planning and execution of each killing, to his feeling before, during and after. I brought the book home and showed it to my wife who said it was the most disturbing thing she had ever seen and said it had to be destroyed, that it could not be kept in our house with 3 young children.

Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Center, in the living room of his suburban Detroit home. Yamasaki is my father.

Dennis Rodman, 27, Detroit Pistons forward who would lead the NBA in rebounding for 7 straight seasons and later was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame.  His nickname was “Worm” because of the way he wiggled when he played pin ball. In 20211 he was proclaimed  one of the NBA’s greatest players of all-time by being named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. May. 1988

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Arianne Lane, 7, a junior bridesmaid at a family friend’s wedding wears a smile and a 2 pound carbon fiber halo attached to her skull and a vest to keep her neck rigid in preparation for complicated and dangerous surgery to rebuild her spine damaged by the removal of 2 tumors growing in her spine just below her brain (in 2 separate surgeries) and subsequent chemo and radiation treatments. For more about Arianne, her surgeries, recovery and return to the normal life of a 7 year old, see Arianne in the Gallery. December, 1997

Niklaus Schmutz, owner of Nik’s Garden Cafe at the grill cooking cooking eggs, potatoes and bacon for a steady stream of regulars – farmers, town folk and regulars from surrounding areas willing ro drive extra miles for the food and atmosphere.

Michael Moore, with a smile on his face and a brick ready to fling, shows his displeasure at a shuttered and partially demolished GM plant in Flint, Michigan.

Vietnamese girls walk to school in their ao dai, the traditional dress of Vietnamese school girls. Saigon, 1990

Harry, a fishmonger at Pure Food Fish Market at  Pike Place Market in Seattle, shows me a salmon, minus its head.  2011

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