After Cher’s film, Mask she became the honorary chairperson and spokesperson for the Children’s Craniofacial Foundation and in this capacity brought Marie Matejic who she met while touring Australia, to Houston for facial reconstruction. In an operating room in the Humana Hospital’s Craniofacial Institute, Cher studies Marie’s X-rays.
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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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 in Detroit MI “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. The long time church members were arrested for occupying the church after the city of Detroit, claiming eminent domain, took possession of the church from the Archdiocese of Detroit a month earlier. The city leveled an entire neighborhood, known as 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. July 1981
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 Leonard 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 were highly flawed (claims of suppressed evidence, discredited witnesses, etc.). April 1992
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.
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
Confused Reagan supporters – in an autumn 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 the 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
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
Chris Webber, 20, NBA Rookie of the Year, 5-time NBA All Star and a member of the Naismith Memorial 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 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
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.
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 death row 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 2011 he was proclaimed one of the NBA’s greatest players of all-time by being named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. May 1988
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 eggs, potatoes and bacon for a steady stream of regulars – farmers, town folk, and regulars from surrounding areas willing to 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
