Interview: Night Ministry in San Francisco With Reverend Lyle Beckman by Peter Menkin
him.
The project took about three weeks or so to complete. I went out with the night ministers maybe four or five times and I went to open cathedral twice. The opportunity to shoot the night ministry came from one of the night ministry board members, Ginny Spiegel, who wanted to include large format photographs of the night ministers in one of their fundraisers.
The idea was to help people to see what the night ministers really do – to make people feel like they are out on the street with the ministers. I think it ended up being pretty successful. It seemed as though people were able to connect with the pictures and so connect with the night minister’s work.
I wanted to shoot in black and white because I like black and white. It feels more provocative and engaging to me than color. Color reminds me of the same stuff I experience on a day to day basis. Black and white abstracts from reality and makes me face the emotions that are underlying that experience on a day to day basis.
2. When this writer met you in the Bishop’s office with others, as part of the host process, I was struck by how comfortable you were there. My understanding is you went to the Cathedral School for Boys. Was this your first time in the Bishop’s office to discuss the photo series? When did you begin seriously taking pictures, and do you take photography at the school you now attend? What is the name of the school?
The school I now attend is St. John’s College in Santa Fe, [New Mexico]. It’s a liberal arts school. It’s something of a unique school – every person in the school takes the same classes (there is only one major for all who attend).
The classes trace the history of literature, philosophy, math, and science, beginning with the Greeks and ending in modern times. We read a lot.
St. John’s doesn’t have a photo class, but I took a class at Urban School of San Francisco, where I went to high school. That is probably when I started taking pictures seriously, although I can’t say for sure. Early high school, I’d say, when I was 15 or so I began to be really interested in how things can visually fit into a rectangle, and I looked through a rectangle made of my fingers a lot. That was my initial interest in composition and balance.
Eventually I got a camera and for a long time photographed things on the street – cracks on the sidewalk, a nice looking door, leaves on the ground that made pretty patterns. But none of that felt like I was taking it seriously.
It was play and a meditation. It was a way of stepping outside myself and for a few hours every week being in contact with the beauty around me. Maybe I began to take photography seriously when I took that first class, when I was 17 or so. Then I had to turn in a photo project and really think about what I was taking pictures of.
3. Which of the photographs you took as shown at the Gallery 1055 was your favorite? Why is that? Is there one that has the better story behind it, and if the same one that is your favorite tell us something of the story. Some of the readers will want to know about the camera you used. Will you tell us something about it, and maybe discuss how you took the pictures at night so you wouldn’t intrude on a scene? Did you have to be kind of invisible, or did you introduce yourself and speak about your reasons for being with the Night Ministers of San Francisco?
I’m not sure which is my favorite. Trying to think of which is my favorite makes me feel like a mom asked to pick her favorite child. She probably does have one, but would never admit it because the love and time she gave to each. Photos are similar.
I spent hours on each one of those photos, on the process of taking them and weeding out the initial crop I didn’t like. The editing then took hours more and in many ways that was the real act of creation. That was when I connected seriously with the emotion of the photos and tried to bring that out.
The best story… there are a lot of great stories. I can’t get over the fact that so much of the light in these photos came from strip clubs – I like the idea that the harsh neon light from strip clubs cast a soft and luminescent glow on the priests. Also, in the picture, where a man is on the street with books around him and Monique, the priest, has her hand outstretched – I asked the homeless guy if I could take his picture and he told me I could, but only if I learned something from it.
I or the priest I was with always asked if I could take their picture and be present while they talked. Some of the conversations were very personal and both the priests