Kate, Maggie And Their Father: Seeing Life Through A Camera’s Lens

By Shannon Hicks

A story that ran this week in The New York Times declared in its headline “Godmother of Punk Rock Is No Comeback Kid.” Lynda Richardson’s story concerned Patti Smith and her current career, which to some seems to be revitalized only now that Ms Smith has released her eighth album.

“If one is an artist, one is an artist within. You take what you are with you. I didn’t come back, because I never went anywhere,” Ms Smith is quoted as saying. “As an artist, I stayed true to myself and true to my work.”

Steve Bamberg related to that thought immediately. The Newtown resident is suddenly being courted by NBC-TV’s Today show, Connecticut’s FOX News affiliate, The Hartford Courant, and even People magazine for a personal project he began nearly ten years ago.

Mr Bamberg is currently having his artwork — photographs — featured at Real Art Ways, a contemporary Hartford gallery at 56 Arbor Street, in an exhibition called “Kate, Every Day of Her Life.” The exhibition is on view only until June 24, but it has already brought long-lasting memories and experiences for Mr Bamberg and his entire family.

“Kate, Every Day of Her Life” presents gallery visitors with some of the 3,700± photographs Mr Bamberg has taken of his younger daughter Kate. A professional freelance photographer who has been published in New York Daily News Sunday, The New York Times, Newsday, Newsweek, and Life magazine, Mr Bamberg began his “Kate Project” the day his second daughter was born.

The personal project is limited to one photo of Kate per day with one of Mr Bamberg’s 15 cameras. The photographs are black-and-white and range from posed to candid, silly to serious. The majority of the images show only Kate, with just a handful showing older sister Maggie or mom Nancy.

The project is ambitious, moving, and fantastic. Mr Bamberg’s photography talents are seen not only in the fact that the project camera is a Pentax MX — hardly a point-and-shoot garden variety photography tool — but also in the resulting images. Aside from a few photos where some type of lighting source had to be set up, all of the interior shots have been taken using available light; a large percentage of the shots have also been done outside.

Mr Bamberg had wanted to do a similar project for his first-born, Maggie, but the project didn’t interest her at first. However, she began to enjoy her father’s idea when she was a little bit older so Steve has also taken her picture once a day for the last five years, since Maggie turned 11.

Of course, any long-term project is going to come across bumps. What to do when one of the girls isn’t home — when she is staying at a friend’s house, or off on a Girl Scout camping trip? What to do when Steve isn’t home?

The solution: Enlist help, but only when necessary. Nancy Bamberg has taken one or two of the photos for the Kate and Maggie projects when Steve has been out of town. A few years ago, Steve actually went rushing over to a house where one of the girls was spending the night so that he could take her picture for the day.

A few weeks ago, the night of the opening in Hartford, Steve returned to Newtown late at night and the girls were already asleep. He had to creep into their bedroom with a flashlight in order to not only get their daily photos, but also to provide some light.

Kate’s Girl Scout leader, Ruth Brassard, took photos when Kate was off for a weekend with her Girl Scout troop once, and another adult is going to be enlisted for the project this summer when the youngest Bamberg heads south to spent a week in Florida with some of her friends.

“I’ll teach her friend’s mother how to run the camera, if I need to,” Steve said. “I may also just send a point-and-shoot with her. It’s more important that it’s at least a decent photo, not necessarily a spectacular photo, just one that comes out well, period.”

Mr Bamberg was interviewed last week for NPR’s Morning Edition, which aired Friday, June 15. He was then visited by a camera crew from FOX-61/WTIC-TV, the Connecticut affiliate of the FOX network, on Saturday, June 16, for an interview that was aired during that night’s 10 o’clock news broadcast.

Right after the FOX crew left the Bamberg home, Steve and his daughters were picked up by a limo sent to Newtown from New York City. The Bambergs were then driven into the city, where they spent the night at the Essex House courtesy of NBC-TV.

The next morning Steve, Maggie, and Kate were all featured on Sunday morning’s episode of Weekend Today. Nancy Bamberg caught up with her family at the hotel Saturday night, and was with them in the studio for the NBC interview, during which not only Kate but also Maggie were invited to speak.

“The Hartford show is focusing on Kate, but more and more of the people we talk to are including Maggie, which I’m very happy about,” Steve said this week. “As this has all been taking off, it’s been including both of them, which is what it’s always been about — both of our daughters.”

“I was okay for the radio interview,” he continued. “Although I began moving my hands around a lot towards the end of it,” he laughed.

Television was a little different. He was “okay” for the FOX interview, which was taped and then presented a few hours later, but the Weekend Today show was a little different: it was a live broadcast.

“The kids were fine. I was the one who was nervous,” he admitted.

Putting The Personal

Projects On Hold

Like Patti Smith, Mr Bamberg put many of his personal projects on hold when his children were born (Mrs Smith moved to Detroit with her husband, became a homemaker, and started a family in the 1980s, more or less putting her musical career aside for 16 years). When Maggie was born in March 1985, Steve began focusing on commercial photography work and also worked with his wife in bringing up their daughter.

Steve studied at the International Center for Photography in New York City, doing an internship in 1978, after graduating from Brooklyn College in 1975 with a bachelor of political science. However, while studying at Brooklyn, Mr Bamberg also accumulated over 30 art course credits.

In the early 1980s he participated in solo exhibitions at O.K. Harris Gallery in New York City and Bronx Museum of Arts. His work was included in “The Brooklyn Rediscovery Folklife Exhibition” at Brooklyn Borough Hall, Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1982, and “Kaleidoscope,” a group exhibition show at The Museum of Diaspora, Tel Aviv, in 1987.

In addition to a number of private collections, Mr Bamberg’s work is included in the permanent collections of Museum of the City of New York, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Diaspora, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Between the shows there was also a lot of work in magazines based in the United States as well as some from around the world. Among international publications, Japan’s Asahi Shimbum and Asahi Camera, France’s Actuel and Photo, and the Italian version of Photo also published his work. A photographic essay called “Urban Nomads” was published by Bronx Museum of Arts in March 1981, and his work has appeared from time to time in The Hartford Courant’s Northeast magazine.

He takes photographs for corporate clients and corporate brochures, does photo stills for shows and publicity related to CPTV, and does a lot of family and individual portrait work. Oh, and there was that wedding job he did for the actress Kathleen Turner a number of years ago.

Additionally, Mr Bamberg spent much of his time teaching, including positions at Western CT State University as an adjunct professor of photography in 1996; New York University’s MFA program, also as an adjunct professor, in 1984; a photography teacher at Grosvenor Community Center in New York; and a teacher of photography at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, 1981-82.

Up until last fall, Mr Bamberg was teaching at Film Makers Educational Co-op, in Bridgeport, and has taught a number of courses for one of his biggest loves: Newtown Youth Services.

“I have always worked with kids in one form or another, and the minute we moved into Newtown I looked into finding some kind of outlet where I could help them locally,” Mr Bamberg said. He has been an active volunteer of the nonprofit organization for eight years, having begun donating his time and energy almost from the moment he and his family moved into Newtown in February 1994, and is currently a co-chairman of the NYS board of directors.

“It was a pleasant surprise to come here and find an agency that seeks kids out and makes a difference in their lives,” he said of the non-profit social services agency.

“I’ve been photographing a lot of kids in Newtown,” he said. “The one who aren’t really praised all the time, the ones who don’t have as much of a voice. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this, but it’s a work in progress.”

In March, he became a Master Teaching Artist, sanctioned by Connecticut Commission on the Arts. In being so named, Mr Bamberg joins a growing list of over 220 artists and ensembles who are recognized and trained by CCA and who specialize in curriculum-integrated residencies.

In addition to his photographs of Newtown children and the Kate and Maggie projects, Steve has been taking very dramatic photos of a Bronx-based motorcycle gang for a few years. He has also been working on a book for a few years about Hassidic Jews in Brooklyn. These people, who have been transplanted from around the world and continue to practice their religion to the extreme, have allowed rare access for Steve. He calls that project “The World that Never Vanished.”

Both projects are on-again, off-again works in progress that are worked on when Steve can make time for them. They may not be bringing in the big money that commercial and portrait work can, but they are clearly works of art and they mean just as much if not more to the photographer because they are from the heart.

“I can’t help it,” Steve Bamberg admitted this week, echoing Patti Smith. “If you are an artist, you always carry your art with you. I can’t go out anywhere without seeing photographs in my head. I am constantly composing mental pictures.

“I’ve always been working on these projects, whether people have been seeing them or not. They’ve always been there.”

For further information or to talk with the photographer about a portrait sitting, Steven Bamberg can be contacted by calling 426-7801.