Welcome to the real Photoshow. My guest today is photographer and pediatrician doctor Greg Gulbrandson. Greg joins me today to talk about his book, say less, published by Gost books, and we'll talk about how facing tragedy in his personal life and being a children's doctor all lead to his exploration of gun violence. Greg is unique as a guest because he is both a full time working doctor and has had great success with fashion photography. He also approaches his medical work and his documentary photography work with similar ideals and practice, and we talk a good deal about that. And let me just give you a brief description of the work. Over the course of three years, Grey gold Branson photographed Malik, a set leader of the violent street gang, the Crips. Malik was shot and paralyzed in 2018 by a bullet from a rival gang. As a result, his world now centers around his small Bronx apartment in New York, where he is cared for by his family and fellow gang members. Cole Branson, a practicing doctor, had been photographing in the Bronx during his spare time and had got to know some of the local kids. He began to notice a lot of young men in wheelchairs with spinal injuries and was professionally curious. He was told they all had been shot. He wanted to speak to someone in a wheelchair and was introduced to Malik through a fellow crip. So that's the basic premise of the book. But before we get to that, real photoshow is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club. Begin building your dream photo book library today@charcoalbookclub.com. dot Julys photo book of the month is Wild rose by Gabrielle Duplantier. Wild Rose is set in southwestern France, and at the center of the book is the house Gabrielle du Plantier grew up in. And in 2019, after having traveled to Europe, Morocco and India, she returned home, where her aging father and the old home were in steady need of attention. And Gabrielle happily gave herself to their care while making the allegorical landscapes still lives and portraits in this book. So visit charcoalbookclub.com today where you can either join as a member or purchase a first edition signed copy of this book as of this recording. All right, so again, my guest today is doctor Greg Gulbrandson. And like I mentioned earlier, he is a unique guest. He has a unique mind. I really enjoyed talking to him. Just a small trigger warning. The life altering event that Greg describes from his own personal tragedy, and the story and descriptions of Malik, the former gang leader, are intense and have some graphic detail. It's not a lot, but I just wanted to give you a heads up. All right, everyone, thank you for listening. Enjoy the show, and we will talk soon. Well, hi. Greg Gulbrandson. Thanks for joining me. This has been a long time in the making this show.
Yes, it is. You are quite the busy person. You're an amazing educator. I see you're on this podcast. You do one with Sasha. You're a professor. I mean, you do a lot of teaching. You are a busy person.
Yes, you too. Yeah. You all have a very multifaceted career. So, I mean, we definitely want to talk about your book. Say less.
Sure.
Is that book now fully published and out and.
Okay, so I just received a truck in my driveway about an hour ago, a palette, and I have my allocation. The other ones are still in England, and the book is fully published on August 19.
And who published it?
Gost. Gost. And, yeah, they do.
I always say it wrong. I always say ghost.
Yeah, right. They do a nice job. Stu Smith runs it now over in England, and he's got a very nice crew. Katie Glyfford from aperture is on this side of the pond, and she's involved. It's a nice, big team. They do a nice job.
Yeah, yeah. So we're gonna get to that. But like I said, you. You have this very multifaceted career. You are a pediatrician.
Yes.
A very active pediatrician.
Yes, yes.
You are also one of the, I'd say, primary two people who helped pass the law for backup cameras to be on all american cars.
Yeah. So that was, you know, I had that accident with my son. I don't want to, you know, put anybody in panic mode here, but I did have an accident with my two year old.
And 2002.
Yeah. I didn't have any. It was devastating. Right. So we backed over him. And so I was a pediatrician at the time, and that became a national news story. And I decided, you know, it was a real crossroad. What was I going to do? I had a five year old surviving child and said, you know, I'm really going to channel my grief into policy change and see what I can do. And ironically, it involved cameras. Right. So it took a long time. It started off with Hillary Clinton, and I had to testify and different Senate select subcommittees within Congress, and lots of. I became sort of the spokesperson. It was myself and then Jeanette Fennell from kids and cars. I became a board member of that. And they were kind enough to name the law after my son. It's been through for many, many years. Started in 2008, and it took about a dozen years on a big lawsuit. At the end. But yeah, it's called the Cameron Gilbrans's kids transportation Safety act. That's the name of death of my son. And it basically says 2018 Ford. Any car sold in this country has to have a camera facing rear with a rear view camera when it's shifted into reverse, anything under 10,000 pounds. So that's, you know, that's it. And it was an accomplishment, and I'm glad I did that. It wasn't fair that only, you know, people who could afford expensive navigation units at the time, they were $3500. So for me, that's how I practice medicine. It's, you know, you have to be fair to everybody. So due to the economics of scale, if you put it in every single car, the price came down lower. So that was actually a lot. I mentioned that because it's, it's a lot of the drive behind what I do and how I do it. Now, I was a pediatrician at the time, so I admitted my wrong. I said, well, it's my fault. You know, a lot of people don't. And I said, nope, I own it. I did it. It's my fault. And I think it would have, anyone else would have done the same thing. He got out of the house late at night and after my wife was inside with him with a babysitter, and I didn't think he'd be outside at all. He'd never opened the door before. And I was carefully backing the car in the driveway, and he just came right out with his blanket and went into the cardinal, just, you know, there but for the grace of God go I. It could happen to anybody, but it happened to me. And it turns out it was happening a couple hundred times a year, and it was under the radar phenomenon. So there was no database. When these people, when there's an accident like that on private property or in a shopping mall, in a parking lot, if it's not on a public street, it doesn't become data. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration doesn't collect it. So we actually set up a database and we're able to say, all right, now let's find out what the numbers are. So it was very difficult to do that. And then we could see, well, wow, this is happening a lot. It's usually under five, typically under two or over 65 older people in shopping malls getting in there, in and out of their cars. And it was a real big problem, like, wow, this is bad. So when database was set up, then it became a matter of pushing against the automobile industry. And that was a very serious push.
And. Yeah. The automobile industry does not move quickly.
No. And the Office of Management Budget inside the White House, they have a little subdivision there that makes sure we're not overspending on regulations and rules. And that's a good thing. Right. We don't want to overspend. We don't need to. But they just thought it was ridiculous and they wouldn't do it, so had to sue them.
And I know you've. You've told this story probably hundreds of times.
Yeah, sure, sure.
And I don't want to, you know, I'm very sorry, and it's really tragic and all, but, you know, you've. You have this, this whole life that is inspired also by this work in this photography that you're doing. You. But not only is your life have all these different facets to it, you're the. Your photography does, too. I noticed you did quite a bit of commercial and celebrity photography, but even within that kind of fashion, celebrity photography, you did a campaign on breastfeeding.
Yeah.
As well.
You know, I'm sort of a very diverse person, a jack of all trades. And I really do work seven days a week in the office. Well, certainly during this last nine months, I have. And to deal with the stress, Michael, of all this whole thing. And you can imagine the luggage that I carry. I did turn to art, and I turned to photography, and I was just walking the beaches here on Long island, taking photographs of, like, snowy owls and things like that. Birds, they're quiet. They're peaceful. It's nature. It's beautiful thing to do. A lot of big industry now, bird photography.
And I just realized in the interview that. We'll get to that. It started with the snowy owl.
Yeah, it did. It did. We get into that. But I eventually shifted over to people, and I was kind of looking for myself. So I took a day course with Lindsey Adler learning light, and then a day course with Christopher Knight learning lighting. And then I spent one weekend with Victoria will, who's one of my favorite people in the world, learning lighting. So I said, okay, I know lighting. And then I decided to hook up with a woman by the name of Griselle Rosario. And we did these editorials for international fashion and beauty magazines. Nothing in the states, you know, Elle in Europe somewhere, and Marie Claire and Harper's. And it was fun. I enjoyed it a lot, but it really wasn't me, me, me kind of thing. So I really am a storyteller. My father liberated Dachau and world War two, and my grandfathers were farmed in New York City in the 1920s, and I had all these stories and old black and white pictures that I grew up with and from all of these things that these men went through. And I just ended up saying, you know, I have to connect with people. So one thing I learned was that all of the special effects in Hollywood, nothing can compare to the expression of a human face. And I really decided that I wanted to photograph people and try to tell stories. So I went back. I had to figure that out, and I went back, you know, I have no training at all. I have zero, other than the three people who taught me how to take courses.
Right?
Yeah, I was doing bears and birds, and I took workshops, and then I just do the magnum courses online and read photo books. And I listen to you, Sasha, and.
Sasha Wolf, before we get too far ahead, I did also read you mentioned that photography was a big part of your father's life. In what way was photography a part of his life?
So my dad was an advertiser, and he would hire photographers to do various photo projects around the world. His client was Raytheon, and it was missiles, right? And it was radars. So when the QE two would go under the VErrazano bridge in Manhattan, and he hired Russell Munson, a famous aired air photographer, back in the late, I guess, early eighties, 79, 80, he said, greg, you gotta go up on the plane with this guy and hand him his lenses. So I did. And then he closed the lower level of Arizona bridge once when the QE two was going the other direction, and you gotta hand this photographer his lenses. And it was always there. He called it the Honeywell Pentax. He said, the photographers talk about Honeywell Pentax. So he had a Honeywell in the house, and I, you know, I didn't know how to use it. There was a little meter that went up and down, you know, so it was fun. But it was. Yeah, it was fun to have around. So there was that impression of the camera, and, yeah, it was nice to use. It was fun.
So, forgive me, you went through this part of your life pretty quickly. Did you say your father survived Dachau?
No, my father liberated Dachau. He was the second tank in the tank. He was battle of the bulge. My grandfather, his father was in World War one. My father's in World War two. And we have, back in the day, I don't know if they still do this with the soldiers, but back in world War two, they gave you a yearbook from when? The day you showed up at boot camp to when you went home. And his whole story of the battle of the bulge is in photographs in black and white, and the liberating dark cow was in black and white. And we actually have individual black and white photographs that were. That he took. So, you know, it was unbelievable stuff. And then, you know, that stuff, we still have it in the house, actually. And there were also photographs growing up that I was exposed to by my grandfather when he was a fireman in New York City, back when they had Dalmatians and these old trucks and just incredible photographs. And it's stuck in my brain. But, yes, photography was there in that respect, but it was. No, no one in my family was a photographer. We just liked photography. Told to appreciate it.
Yeah. Well, you know, you've been sending me some videos that you also have on your website.
Yep. Yep.
Some Instagram stories. And these are your interviews and recordings you made to go along with sort of filling in the story and the background of Malik, who is the central protagonist in your book. Say less. And what I noticed about, kind of almost like your interview style is you interview like a doctor. Like, you interview like a doctor asking a patient questions, because you take nothing for granted in what they're saying.
Yeah.
And it's like you're building a diagnosis as you're sort of interviewing the patient, so to speak. Have you noticed that or thought about it?
I only know one way, so I really. I love the fact that you point to get out. And now I'm going to go back and watch all my videos tonight. But we as doctors are very guilty of doing a lot of wonderful things, but also things we do wrong. We only listen, on average, for 7 seconds. When the patient comes in the room and we walk in the room, 7 seconds. That is not enough. So I really try to not do that. Sometimes I'm physically biting my lip, and I'm just listening and talking. And I. Unfortunately, the way I have it arranged is I see about 85 patients. We see about 85, 90 patients a day, and I see about 75% of that. So, you know, we move along pretty quick there. Pediatrics, you know, you can do that sometimes, but you have to listen. And when I'm with the people, particularly in this story, the name of the book is say less for a reason. They said very little. So I really spent a lot of time listening to what they would say.
Yeah. And that say less comes from Malik's gang or crew.
Yeah. So say less. It's an expression.
It was code for, you know, don't say a lot.
Yeah, right. It's code for you don't need to say any more. And just in general, I noticed they said very little anyway, so it's amazing how little is discussed, but they know it. This weekend, if you saw on the Instagram post, I took the two little boys, Malik's son and another boy, over to the fire hydrant to get cool em off because it was so hot. Blistering hot. My wife and I were moving my son's apartment in the city and I said, you know, let me run up and check on these kids. So I just got on the FDR and bumped up there and said, let's go and take care of these kids. But it wasn't until Sunday this week that Nate, one of the guys that was shot in the book, he has a colostomy bag, actually told Malik what it was like when he was shot and where it was. It's only down the block. It's about 250ft. And he was shot four years ago. Don't you guys talk about this stuff?
He just told him for the first time.
He's telling him for the first time.
Yeah.
So they really. It's a lot of body language. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. Yeah.
Let's talk about the book a bit. And you mentioned how you were, you've been sort of influenced by the old black and white photos. And these photos are very much in the style of a kind of a classic documentary photographer. And I know you were also inspired by the Eugene Smith country doctor photo essay from Life magazine.
Yes.
Which also had the Life magazine also often had that very almost kind of gritty black and white style of photography when they would do a photo essay.
Yes.
And so it's interesting that you went from this super slick fashion and commercial and, you know, let's just say Chris Knight, like lighting.
Right. With a phase one camera. There you go.
That's right. To this work, which is a heartbreaking, also beautiful collection of photos that tries to create a portrait of somebody's life.
Right. Yeah.
Why don't we talk about how that all came to be?
Yeah, sure. So when I decided to go back to the. When I decided to talk about or photograph people and look for the human expression, my wife said, you know, why do you have to go so far where I take pictures in Alaska and here, there. Why don't you go closer? And I had done some rotations in medicine through the Bronx, particularly psychiatry, and I really wanted to go in there and experience it when I was in medical school. So I was sort of enamored by the place. Yeah, sure, you go to Arthur Avenue, and that's fine, but that's a cute place to still go. But the rest of it, you know, it was a dangerous place. But I knew there were a lot of stories there, and I was going into the. What's the documentary center there in the Bronx that everyone talks? Bronx documentary center?
Bronx documentary center.
Yeah, sure. I went there, and I thought I read the hours properly, but the door was locked, and it was a Sunday, and I came upon these kids riding bicycles in this big group, and I thought, wow, that's kind of cool. I relate to kids. This is great. And I did. And there was a father involved. His name is Macho or Carlos, and he was really trying his hardest in the neighborhood to get the kids in this group. It's called bikes up, guns down. Let's ride. Instead of going in these gangs and using guns and killing each other and doing drugs, let's stay clean. Come on, guys, let's do this. So I said, hey, I'm Greg. I'm into it. Can I help you out? It's wintertime. Can I maybe buy the kids some gloves or something? Make some t shirts, you know, let's. I think this is great. So I did that for a few years. I would ride from the Bronx down to lower Manhattan with the police cars chasing us and my camera strapped to my chest, and I would just try to learn photography. And I didn't even know the different genres of photography. I didn't know the difference between documentary and fine art. I just photography. So I was doing that, and after a while, it wasn't really hitting home. I mean, I made a little personal book, and it was kind of cool, maybe I took two good pictures. But after a while, I was realizing a lot of people there were, in fact, in wheelchairs, particularly in the Bronx area, because I'm in the southern south part of the Bronx. And they said, oh, those are spinal cord injuries. When I inquired about that, and I said, well, I guess they must be hit by cars and stuff like that. People said, no, man, you got to get it straight, Greg, they've been shot. They're all shot gunshot victims. And I said, you know, this bikes up, guns down thing? And I hadn't seen any guns at the time. I said, do you guys actually carry guns when you're riding around here? And they were like, well, some of the guys do. And I thought, well, this is terrible. So then I decided, you know what? Let me stick with one little neighborhood and see if I can meet and photograph and tell the stories of people who've been shot. So I went around, and there's a lot of people who shot. I'm talking about shot and survived. So that turned into, hey, one of the riders that you used to ride with was shot, and it was a gang rivalry, and he's now in a wheelchair. Why don't you go meet him? So I did. We had mutual friends, and he still knew who I was. He remembered me. I went up to his apartment one time, and it was, you know, a little scary. I hadn't been up into the projects yet and went into the Mitchell projects and pretty much at the bottom of the Bronx. And I met Malik. You know, we had to do our little sort of getting to know you thing. He had to suss me out, and I had to suss him out and make sure we were okay. But I had had a reputation in the community. They knew I wasn't a fed because I knew I was also stepping on some very dangerous territory because it was a gang robbery. That's what he was the victim of. So you just. You just figured it out quickly? Pretty quick. So I decided after a while, you know, I said, look, are you okay with me, white guy from the suburbs, taking these pictures and telling your story? And he was like, please, please do it. And I talked to his mom, became very close to his mom, very close to his mom. And his biological father sometimes was still in and out of the apartment. Mom's boyfriend lived in the apartment. A lot of people lived in the apartment.
Right. When you start the project, it's a pretty busy place.
It is. It's basically Penn station. Yeah, yeah.
And the photographs show that. One of the things I notice about the photographs is you get in close for details of objects, details of things. You get in, you pull back to get multiple people in a photograph. You are, like I said, creating this portrait. The book is a portrait, right? The book is a portrait. And what you really come away with is that Malik has all these people in his life who care for him, right?
He does. And a lot of people who don't care for him. So it's a dicey situation. You know, I. Everybody in the gang was arrested except for him.
And that's very recently, right?
In September. Yeah. Nine of the last nine went down, including his brother. So he is. And that's when that happened. I was warned, Greg, keep a low profile for a while. Don't come because it was questionable. How do you ratted him out? And what was going on, and he was a wanted man. You better hit the road, Greg, because you're associated with him. I just stayed a little low, but I kept going back. Cause I didn't do anything wrong, and it was dicey. I mean, he. To this day, he still doesn't really like going outside.
So I'm sorry I brought that up because you mentioned his father, and I know his mother has been his primary caretaker during the day, but sometimes at night, his father takes over, or he did take over.
So a lot of the situations like that in the projects, they will take care of each other instead of having the city send a visiting nurse so they get paid to. Shawn's father will do the night shift. The mother, if she's not working out, maybe Barclays doing the janitorial stuff or whatever she can do, she'll take care of him during the day. And they get paid for that because otherwise you have to have a nurse come in. He's super high maintenance. He has to be catheterized three times a day. If not, you can have a hypertension.
But we should mention Malik was shot in the spine.
Yeah, I'm sorry about that. So he was shot at the age of 18 in the thoracic spine. T six. And the bullet is still there. I mean, it's in the x rays. You can see the x rays in the book. And I could feel with my finger. And he actually, when he's outside, sometimes, Greg, we got to go inside. The bullet's really starting to hurt me. So it's still there. And he's paralyzed from the chest down. So he requires complete care from there down, including bandage changes, because he's got a lot of open sores, a lot of bones sticking out on his chest, on his knees, on his buttocks. It's quite bad. And those lesions where the skin meets the bones, the skin is constantly growing, regrowing. I don't know if people know this, but that's very, very prone to a very aggressive type of skin cancer. And one of the guys in the book who's in the book did die from that. And he also required catheterizing no less than every 8 hours, and diaper changes and everything else, so. Yeah.
And your photographs show, don't hold back on that.
No, no, I don't. Yeah, he's pretty liberal, and I'm pretty liberal, and I always ask permission. And they do strip him down. At least when the gang was in function, a lot of the buddies would show up and hold him up because he's stiff as a board, you know, and hold him up and strip him down and carry him like a board right into the shower. The shower curtain falls down, the chair, the little chair that he has to sit on breaks. And he's in there, and he. There's a picture of it carrying him in naked. And it's rough, you know, it's rough. But he, by the way, when I take pictures like that, I always ask permission. He always sees the picture in the camera. And then when the project was done, before I signed any releases, I said, please study every photograph, and please read every text, and please approve it. And I'm not coming back for a week. I want you to really sit with us. So I just wanted to throw that in now, but, yeah, yeah.
And we'll talk more about that idea of being an insider, being an outsider, the idea of exploitation, the idea of consent, all those things.
Yeah, yep, yep.
But, you know, let's stick with the book. A little bit of how many photos.
Are in the book in total, it's about 90 something.
Yeah. It's about a hundred people book. Yeah, yeah. And in the center of the book is this fairly thorough interview by Bill Shapiro. And one of the things I noticed about those pages is that they're thinner, magazine like pages.
Yes.
What was the decision behind that?
So Stu Smith makes these decisions, and Stu Smith is like Frank Lloyd Wright. So it's like the 11th hour, and 59 seconds later, bang, there's the COVID Bang. That bang, bang, bang is what we're gonna do. So the decision to use the paper was a little bit earlier than that, and he wanted to have an interview. Bill Shapiro interviewed me. Now, Bill actually pronounced Shapiro. He was the editor in chief of Life magazine. So, you know, he doesn't really get credit for that title in the book, but that's who he is. He's a. He's a wonderful person, and he's involved with a lot of projects, and he decided, you know, Kirk, can I collaborate with you? And I said, wow, I'd be honored because I'm a nobody. So the four and a half pages of reading in the book is in the center of the book, and it's just a question and answer thing. We go over it, and that's it. That's all you have. And in the back of the book, there's a description of each plate. There's also a comment in the back or something like that. One page.
And there's a few photos that seem more attached to that interview.
Yes, there are. That's the portrait page. Portrait section, where I really get in there close. I use, like, an 85 millimeter lens and sometimes artificial light, sometimes not. And I just did faces. Almost every one of those persons has passed away. But, yes, that's the portrait section right in the middle. Interesting layout.
It is, it is. And I was. I was wondering if. If that was an influence from Life magazine to use the thinner magazine style paper.
That would be an answer that I could only ask. Oh, the only one was that Stu Smith, the publisher. Yeah. I'm like, the pediatrician. I'm like, okay, go for it, pal. It sounds good to me.
All right, so then let's get back to in that q and a. You do learn a lot more of the actual story of Malik and the gang violence. And, you know, all that information is there because, you know, as good as photography is, as moving as photography can be, you can never truly create a full portrait of someone's life in photography. It's just never enough.
Never.
The image.
There's no one picture that can. That can express, that can explain somebody anyway.
Or it's 90 pictures, right? Yeah.
Yeah. You need text. You need some text. We kept it to a minimum, but you need it.
It's also, I think, in a great place, having it in the middle. It's unusual, but also it's a bit of a breather because it is a dense, heavy book to get through. I mean, both emotionally and physically. Right. I mean, it's a lot of photos. They're intense photos. It's an intense story. To have that break in the middle to read, I think, is a great way to lay out the book.
So a lot of my family and friends, you know, they don't really know anything about photo books. The photo book world is an elite little niche, and they're fascinating people, and they're.
Everything about the photo world is an elite little niche.
I don't know any of these people. So I tell people, listen, when you open the book, okay. Thumb through it, back to cover. Okay, fine. Now, the second time, go in the middle, read the little bit of text, then go back from the beginning and go to the end. And by the way, the description of the plates are in the back. I said, it's an english thing. I guess they put the text in the middle. I don't know what it is, but it works. So you do have to learn the book. I mean, it's. It's hard. You have to digest it. It's not an easy thing to go through. You know, it's not.
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, the idea of asking permission, getting permission, you know, you spent quite a bit of time making this work.
Yep.
And you. I believe you say it in the interview, and you've already said it here. I mean, you were welcomed into that family at a certain point.
Yes. It was pretty early on. You know, listen, I. I do use my pediatrician skills to. And I'm always honest and I'm straightforward, and there was never a trick. There was never any pictures I didn't want taken. And, you know, I went a lot of times without my camera and I went to check on them. And Christmas Eve, my son and I. No camera. Listen, let's go in there. Everybody gets a coat this year. Everybody gets sneakers, something. You know, let's just. Let's. Let's celebrate what we had together for this year, because we celebrate Christmas. Actually, my son celebrates Hanukkah, but it doesn't matter. It was Christmas that day.
Well, you celebrated Christmas with the family.
Yeah. We go in there Christmas Eve after work. I finish around 233 o'clock on Christmas Eve, and then I drive in. Always the first thing is to take care of them because honestly, they don't have anything. So, listen, you guys let me into your life. We have a lot of fun. We're good friends. I noticed you're a little cold out there. Let's get it cold. Let's get this, let's get that. And then great time. Have some pizza. Maybe mom would make some chicken. And then Scott and I would go home. We do have archives here, so, you know, a lot of those things. And if you're honest and you really love these people, you know, you can do these things. But it wasn't. I wasn't trying to trick anybody. It's authentic, you know?
Right.
It's authentic. People are interesting. And, you know, I can tell the story. It was just a unique thing that, with our relationship, that's all how it worked. It was. It was just a matter of my dynamics and their dynamics. I still talk to them almost every day. I already talked to them. Leaked twice today. So, yeah, that's how it works.
And, you know, I. I draw parallels to Marilyn Mark and Martin Bell's work with Aaron Blackwell and Tiny, which was a 30 year relationship.
Yes.
And, you know, when Martin screened the tiny, the second part of the story.
Right.
That question always came up in the screenings. Were you worried that you were exploiting? Were you worried that you were taking advantage of someone? And one of the things Martin reveals when screening this work at the end of it is this wasn't just Mary Ellen going in and photographing and me filming. There was a relationship, a 30 year relationship. They had offered Aaron Blackwell to move in with that.
Yes. And go to school in their house. Yes. Yes.
And they had provided support for the family for the whole 30 years, and they never lost touch. And like you just said, more importantly, maybe. Most importantly maybe is Erin gave consent all the time.
Yes. Yes.
To what was happening.
So that's a very sensitive issue. And I didn't go to an MFA program where they talk about this stuff, and I refer to them as the Ivy towers. Right. Of photography. But I'm very sensitive to these things. When I grew up. It goes way back. When I grew up, my father made sure we were around all races and religions, and he did a good job of that. And he had a lot of stories, and I think he did that because of his experience in world War two and liberating Dachau. And he was really affected by that. And he didn't want anybody being prejudiced, different religions sensitive to it. So I think he went out of his way to do that. And my mom did a lot of volunteerism in town, but meanwhile, we were upper middle class, silver spoon people living on the water. Right? So. But they went out of their way to push it hard. So when I became a physician, it's more the same thing, or at least the way I practice medicine. Everybody, I have plenty of transgender patients and. And black patients and white patients, asian patients and poor people and super rich people, and I love them all. I just. That's. You just learn that when you're doctoring. You know, I doctored in the Bronx, too. I don't see it as that. I just. I just don't see the world that way, I guess. But I do have to say, well.
You make a great point. And I don't remember if I read it in the book or I read it somewhere else. You said, if as a doctor, I'm not going to only treat my own kind.
Yeah. So, you know, I don't believe in that stay in your lane thing. I think, you know, in the situation, you know, you love everybody. So I actually also simultaneously fell very much for an 87 year old black pastor around the corner from a leak. And that family, Ayanna and Malik, knew her, but I saw her on the street one Sunday, and there she was with her whiskers and her beautiful outfit and this old section of the south Bronx, which was at once burnt down, and she got the little. It was like a deli she converted into a little church, and I said, wow. And I walked over to her after she let her congregation go, and she was standing on the sidewalk, and I said, wow. My name's Greg, and someday, can I come back and take your picture? And, yes, sure. So I ended up doing a photo essay in the church, and I asked permission, and she told her congregation, we have a white photographer here. And I made sure I met everybody. It was a real special thing. I ended up making them a photo book, and Elizabeth Avedon edited it, and I gave them 100 copies, and they sold those books. And I said, look, you do whatever you want with these books. And I make a lot of portraits for them. I always, always bring pictures for everybody. And during the time that I did that, I did sit down with the pastor and say, are you okay with a white suburban man coming in with a camera to a church where there's no white people? And she said, please, I'm 87. Someone's got to tell the story. God sent you. Please stop looking at color. So, again, doing more podcasts, some of your podcasts, and I'm listening. Maybe I'm wrong. I got to do this again. Now, I might add that on the side, I was talking to a lot of well known photographers, and I'd say, what do you think about this? And they would say to me, great. We don't subscribe to that thinking, just shoot. Just be fair and honest. We don't worry about people's color and stuff like that. So I said, well, I still have to keep working on this. So the third time I sat down with the pastor, it was Memorial Day. It was a beautiful, sunny Monday, which is Memorial Day. Everybody's out having a good time. And I said, I've got to go sit down with her. So I did. I went into the church, and I said, listen, can we do this one more time? Are you sure that it's okay? And she said, greg, listen, I'm black, and you're white. If you need my blood, you can have it. And if I need your blood, I'm pretty sure you'd give it to me. The only person who's going to tell this story, and it needs to be told is you. It's just a fascinating story. It's a beautiful story. And she said, God sent you. Please don't leave. And at that point, and then, by the way, she and I would go visit Malik together. And at that point, I said, you know, you just as long as you're being fair and honest and invited in and sharing and you have a good relationship? I would go to church, by the way, without the camera sometimes. And one time I had a real crisis at the office, and I was so worried about it, I just went to church late at night, and I walked out with a camera. So, you know, she knew it was a good relationship. And the congregation, they loved me when I come in. So, yeah, I just. I just don't see it that way. I'm sorry if people disagree. I also photograph, like, tiny, you know, Maryland mark down in West Virginia as a family I've been following for years, and I will continue to follow them for another, probably another eight or ten years. And same thing down there, now that's a white family. But I. It's very much like my office. I feel like I'm their doctor, you.
Know, in some ways, you are the country doctor. Yeah, right.
I got a call from a lawyer one time from West Virginia, Doctor Gabranson. Who do you think you are? I can't practice medicine down here. I was like, what are you talking about? This family needs help. So he's like, well, but you don't have a license. I said, but can you help me help them? These kids are running around without shoes. They have all these infections. They're sick. They got pink eye. Can't you help me help them? He said, okay, no problem. I get it, I get it. And I felt some forms to get a license down there, but, yeah, I'll do those things. And I always have these relationships that are deeper than the photography. I found that if you have these relationships, the photography just falls into place. The pictures are just there. If you put the camera aside and you're not there for the camera, all of a sudden the pictures are better. So now that's my style. I have photographed very few things, and in my lifetime, I'm 62 this year, I will have photographed very few topics, and I photograph the least of anybody who's ever been on your podcast. But I do. I do marry my subjects. And, yeah, you know, you're always asking permission, you're always double checking, always bringing prints back, always showing them pictures. Yeah, that's how I answer it, you know, if they say no, it's no, you know? So, yeah, people are beautiful, Michael, and people are complex, too, but I don't think people should be turned off because of particular things. You know, I had an interesting experience a few years ago. I had this out of town couple in my office, two women, and they had three kids in the office. I'd never seen it before, and I knew it was a transient family because of the way the chart was. We had this little routine in the office. So I walked in, and the two mothers looked like deer in the heads likes. And I knew right away they felt uncomfortable being here. And I said, hey, how you doing? Shook their hands, met all the kids, had a great visit, and we had a lot of fun. And when they left the exam room, the children ran out, you know, get a lollipop or whatever.
I.
Both of the moms turned around and said, hey, we want to say thank you. And I was sitting on my stool there writing my note, and I said, it's nice to meet you. I mean, I'm nice. Thank you very much. I'm glad you're happy. They said, no, where we come from, they don't take care of lesbian parents, gay parents. And I looked at them and I said, is that why you guys are so concerned? When I walked in the room, I said, you got to be kidding me. So I realized, I said, is that for real? They said, yeah. Oh, man, that's terrible. So then I realized, you know, you just gotta put those barriers aside. We got too many barriers, you know, just love people.
We got a little bit away from the story of the book, which is great. I mean, that was a fantastic part of the conversation. But with Malik, towards the end of the book, you talk about where things are now. And you mentioned at the writing of the book, so many of his friends and his brother were arrested, and they were investigated. And then you talk about how the place had become very quiet.
Yes.
And very different.
So that apartment 4G was always a very busy place. Iyanna would always take in all the boys, feed all the boys, and she would describe to me when they were.
Young as Malik's mother.
Yeah, the mother. They would wake up on a Saturday morning, and she'd find boys sleeping in the closet and all over the place. This really became like the penn station of that neighborhood. And when I was photographing him, it was the same way. Even though they were older, in their twenties, there were five, six, seven people in the room. And, you know, after being there for half an hour, I'd see the. Malik was always on the bed. I'd see the bed sheets moving, you know, different piles of bed sheets, and, like, what's that? Oh, there's a woman under there. Okay, well, there's eight people here in the room, or nine. So there was always a lot of people. And it was always a very busy, busy place. But once the feds came in and took the ABG unit down. Everybody was arrested and put away. They're still in jail, and many of them, for many, many years, Malik was the last one standing. And it was scary. It was just him. I said, where did everybody go? They're gone. And that was intimidating. And that was when I was told, you may want to take a break for a little while because things may go down here. But he's still very, very sad. It's very tragic. I don't know who did what to whom, but you can only imagine, right?
Well, that's. You know, I keep coming back to the idea that you have this. You're a doctor, you're a pediatrician, and you treat anyone regardless of their circumstances. You don't hold them to any kind of morality or ethical questioning or anything like that. Well, and especially with children. But with Malik. Malik wasn't just a member of the crips. Malik was one of the leaders of this little subset.
He was. And I wanted to tell his story, and I didn't have. I never asked him what he did. I can imagine he just did something bad. His mom said after the book was done, thank God he's in a wheelchair. Thank God he was shot in the spine, because he would have continued to tear up the world. Now I have my boy home with me. So whatever he did, it was quite bad, and it really wasn't my place to pass judgment on him. I didn't really want to get involved in that. I just wanted to show what was going on, because when I had the accident with my son, back to the beginning of our conversation, automobiles were the number one killer of children in the last few years. And I think you saw this in the surgeon general's announcement this week. Guns are the number one killer of youth in America. Now. It's a particular subset. We're talking about gangs with guns. We're not talking about hunters and people who legally have guns. I'm not getting into those kind of guns. I'm not part of that gun argument. I'm talking about the number one killer of youth, and it's this gang thing, which is exactly what it was. So I decided that I wanted to take this camera of mine and try to say, what is going on? What's the backstory? How do people live? Do they have parents? Do they worship? Do they have children? How old are they? What? Let's give a face to this thing that we don't even know what it is and why is it happening? Is it an offensive move or a defensive move, or is it both. Are they doing it for fun? Where are they getting these guns? And how hard is it to actually get a gun and how many drugs are involved? So that's what the idea behind this project was. It was trying to get out there and say, this is what's really going on, and this is the number one killer of youth in America. And I'm a pediatrician telling the story. So that was really the goal. It was really deep. It was complicated. And just so you know, I had no intention of making a book out of this. I just decided to do it because I wanted to deal with stress, because I just, I have a lot of, you know, demons. And I think you see that in the photography. So that's the real reason it was done, to understand why so many people are dying. Now. There's obviously plenty of other people dying of gun violence in the country with these mass shootings in schools, all absolutely terrible, horrible. But day in and day out, it's the gangs that are shooting each other that bring the numbers up so high with the youth. So that's why I did this project.
Well, what did make you want to make it a book?
Well, to tell you the truth, your good friend Sasha Wolf. When I had, you know, so I did ask Sasha one time, could you help me edit some pictures? And she was good. She was helping. I was down in West Virginia, and she's like, well, this is good, and maybe not so good. And she was teaching me, and she's such a great person. And, you know, she also had gone through some trauma. So we had that. We had that significant loss in our family thing together. And she's wonderful. So Sasha said to me, you know, Greg, Bob Tursek, down in brilliant graphics in Philadelphia, is a very, very good printer. If you want to make some prints here of anything you're doing, check him out. So I befriended Bob, and I sent him the pictures, and he said, you've got to be kidding me. Hold on. This has to be a book. He said, I don't make books, but let me put you in contact with Ralph Gibson. Now, Ralph Gibson, I didn't know at the time. Some people claim he's the, you know, the father of grandfather of photo books. He assisted for Dorothea Lange. He knew Carthier Bresson and Robert Frank. All these people in his life. He's a brilliant person. He has 44 photo books. He's brilliant. I decided to talk to him and share the pictures with him, and he said, stop. You have to make a book. Some of these pictures are this is magnum quality. He said, this is really, really amazing, and you're all in the story. And I said, nah, I'm not in the story. This is about somebody else. No, no, no. So Ralph was very interesting, and then he said, you have to learn how to edit. I said, ralph, I know I can do a lot of things in life, but I will never learn how to edit photographs. I just. I respect photographers.
Good to admit. Yeah, yeah.
And I respect photographers. And I listen to these podcasts, and I listen to these people talk about making these books and these projects. There's no way in the world a physician working seven days a week is gonna have time to do this properly. So we said, okay. And he called Bill Shapiro from a life magazine, and Bill said, hey, can you send me some pictures? And I sent him the pictures, and he called back and he was like, okay, can we talk? And I said, yeah. I said, can we collaborate? He said, let's do it. So he agreed to collaborate, and that's how it became a book.
So, yeah, you know, we mentioned something very early on. I don't think we ever fully got back to it.
Yeah.
What is the connection between your father and the snow owl and you looking for the snow owl?
Yeah. So my dad was your first photographic act? Yeah. My dad was a special guy, and he was a very intelligent guy, but a very, very shy. He was like the most shy person you'll never meet. But he was very intense. New York City Madison Avenue advertiser. He's crazy. And he. We grew up on the water, and we'd always have binoculars in the house, whatever, and see the birds in the backyard, at the beach and all this kind of stuff. And he said, you know, it was one winter day, I see in the newspaper there's a snowy isle down at Jones beach, which is the south shore of Long island. Let's see if we can find it. It was like the middle of February, so we drove down there. Who knew that they were so impossible to find? And we pulled up to the parking lot, and there was a snowy owl about 80ft out in the dunes. So it was like, okay. And that was a very fond memory of my dad. And when I think back to him, those are one of the things that I remember. So after I had lost Cameron years, years later, and was really having a tough time, and I was trying to get this legislation passed to give everybody a camera in their car, it was going to be a big lawsuit. And they said, greg, you're going to lose this lawsuit. And I said, no, I'm nothing. So I told my brother in California, I said, why don't you send me a big lens? I'm going to get a camera and go to a photograph of snowy owl. And I ended up walking down to the beach, didn't even know what histogram was. Had this used lens and a tripod without a gimbal head. I mean, I had no idea. I would have met a great photograph right there. This guy doesn't know what he's doing. So I'm there and I'm on call. It's early in the morning, there's a seal out in the water, and there's a peregrine falcon falling over my head. And I can't find anything. And the dunes are behind me with snow in them. And all of a sudden, the beeper goes off. I never forget it. This woman called me, and I had to turn my back to the ocean because I had to answer her questions about her son's bedwetting or something. And it was 06:00 in the morning, or 07:00 I looked up and there were two snowy owls facing me right in the dunes. And I just. I thought I was art wolf at the time, shooting for National Geographic. And then that's. That's how it started. And, yeah, I continued to walk those beaches and worry about the lawsuit. And I would sometimes get physically sick there and cry on the beach and stuff like that. So, yeah, that's how it went. But it was a snowy island. And to this day, I still love snowy owls. And sometimes I will fly up in the wintertime, if I have time, and the migration's right. And I will photograph on the canadian Michigan border, on the Michigan side and see tons of snowy owls. And I just love my time with the owls. It's a quiet time. It's so cold. No one's around. Well below zero. And that was my connection. I'll never lose the beginning. The beginning was a snowy owl, and I'll never lose it. You know, I always hold onto it.
Well, you are a very impressive person. You're clearly talented beyond photography. And, you know, the way you sort of jumped into it and created this work is. Is amazing. I mean, even going back to your fashion commercial.
Right.
Other work. I mean, you really, when you set your mind to something, you clearly go all in.
Yeah, I do. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I'd be invited to too many parties, photographers. I am a little too intense. Yeah, I am. You know, to tell you the truth, when I look at the pictures in the book, I walk away and I say, I can't believe I did this. In fact, to tell you the truth, I actually just took delivery of a zine. I had Bob Tursek make a zine of about 80 more plates that I took that I couldn't get releases for and that were sort of more backstory pictures or that I took after. Goss said, you gotta stop. We've got to make this book. So. And it's. It's much, much bigger than the original Life magazine. Big glossy pictures. And I look at these pictures and I say, I'll send you one. And I look at these pictures and.
I say, thank you.
I can't believe I did this.
I can. I can't believe you did it. Yeah, I was just talking to you now I can believe you did it all. This has been fantastic, and thank you so much. And of course, for sharing some of the, you know, your life's story and some of the hardships. I really appreciate it.
Sure, sure. You know, I remember when Covid struck, you were, you know, I was working in the office and Reuters came and did that article about me and they wanted to see what's it like for pediatrician. I work house schools and working hard, but I remember you were in a high school helping with the shots later on. Right. Wasn't that you?
Oh, I did. That was actually at my community college.
Yeah. You were in there to give. You were in there helping get those vaccines out to right at the beginning when we were all panicking. Yeah. You were doing that.
Yeah, yep, I did. I did. It was really a wonderful thing because everybody was so nervous and panicking. Yes, I was. I was there to direct traffic and keep people calm.
It was a very, very scary time. Yeah, it was a very scary time. And I worked every single day through it. And, yeah, I mean, you know, you went with what, the information that you had at the time. Meanwhile, I've had Covid three times, but.
I've had it once. Yeah, yeah.
But, yeah, life is interesting. I'm looking forward to see where I go in the future. And I'm listening, forward to listening to more of your podcast and your amazing thank you, photographers who are on here. I learned so much. I look everybody up. I look at their websites, their Instagram pages. I mean, you have such fascinating people.
Well, that's what makes you good, too. So. Yeah, that's really nice to hear. Yeah. Well, thank you again.
Alrighty.
Bye, everyone.
Okay, goodbye, buddy. Have a good rest of your week.
Oh, yeah, you too. All right, bye. Real photoshow is produced by me, Michael Chovendalton, music by Mateo Chovendalton and Jim Raimundo. If you like the show, please rate and review with all the stars on your listening platform.