The Gong

We called our father’s camera “The Gong” because of the motion we’d make. Grab the object around his neck and watch it swing back to his chest. Make the sound “gong.” Like many games, this was one my brother invented, yet we were both annoying our father, complicit in the deed.

The picture taker in our family, he came to photography early on, before my brother and I knew him. Small square black and whites show Mom and Dad’s travels in England, where they lived from 1955-1957, and on travels through a Europe still emerging from World War II. Also documented were their thick long coats with many buttons, Mom’s plaid wool slacks, her flair skirt. In one Oxford picture, he photographs Mom as she faces him, sitting in a punt (row boat) while visiting there, her face widened by the shot so it looks completely round, accented by her bangs and short dark brown hair. In another, their London friends whom they knew from Mom’s Holborn library job and Dad’s work at the Surry mental hospital, peer unexpectedly at the camera, posed on a couch and chair. Later, one of the women, June, would respond to my letter apprising her of Mom’s death, that she and her husband had known Mom and Dad so many years ago when they were young, and communicated only by holiday cards.

For my parents, however, their time in England informed their lives. It was much more than still keeping in touch by holidays cards and about being young at the time. They were the ones on VISAS, they were the ones, as my father said in a letter to friends in the States, getting an education in the experience. Mom stood in front of Rome’s St. Peter’s cathedral, at the fountain. She sat in front of the Parthenon. Stood on a street in Yugoslavia during Tito’s rein. Dad occasionally posed in these photos when Mom took the picture. He has his hands in his pockets beside their car, the Austin Mini, surrounded by so much snow I wonder how they drove through Cheddar Gorge. They bought the car not only for their three month continental journey in 1956 and the two month trip in 1957, but also for their trips in England, and then sold it back.

Our father kept photography magazines in a special drawer in our Richmond house. Not a private place, the square wood telephone table stood in the hallways, available to anyone. To a child discovering a cover photo of a woman wearing a top but no bottom, what was I supposed to think? Her backside mostly faced the camera, her face turned around towards us. She had on a white blouse and a half apron, tied at the waist with cherries printed on it. Each of her butt cheeks was small, round, firm looking. Her expression, a partial smile, as if she knew something we didn’t. As I leafed through, I saw articles on photography, as promised by the name of the magazine, on how to get better pictures, and ads for equipment. Yet none of Dad’s photos looked that way, like the photo of the woman.

My father had a square jaw, and as he got older, his bottom lips became square in shape. He had a full shock of hair, brown turning white early, busy but not too thick eyebrows. He walked in a side-to-side manner, shuffling. His joints were operated on in his 50s and 60s—every finger by Dr. Pachietti, then two knee replacements later on. His handwriting, unreadable to everyone but Mom, his hands shaky, required Mom’s typing out letters for him despite her busy work life. She worked full time as a librarian and then as a medical records trauma coder. He had no secretary, either in private practice as an LCSW counseling couples and families, or as a contractor alternately with the Catholic Diocese of Oakland or the Jewish Family Service in Berkeley. I wonder if his shaky hands were the reason he took so long to take a picture.

His photography of family must have felt different than counseling nuns and priests or couples like the Bushbergs, who owned the Happy Cooker, a cookware store. Sitting or standing in a stationary position was key for both activities, counseling and photography; however, Dad could disappear behind the lense, while with counseling he had to steer and involve himself. None of us witnessed the client sessions, of course, but the fact that these people showed appreciation through gifts—a hand made glass lamp, a painting (both ending up in the family room/garage), and a sandwich named after Dad at one couple’s Los Gatos eatery, showed their appreciation. Further, clients shouted their neediness, calling our house, asking to talk to “Sam,” Dad’s work name. Mom called him Sol. In one case I talked down a suicidal woman. This evidence contrasted his closeness with clients as opposed to his family’s experience of him.

In our family, Dad was absentee. Even when he wasn’t on his regular schedule of late morning wake up and afternoon and evening clients appointments, he’d find ways to slip out. He had to drive further into Richmond to get a replacement part for his shaver. Al Lasher on University had electronics. We’d find McDonald’s napkins tucked in the glove compartment or see peaking out under the driver’s seat a crisp red and white stripe bag from McFarland’s over near the El Cerrito Place, the dry roasted and salted mixed nuts broadcasting his wanderings. But his wanderings took their toll. When Mom almost left the family due to Dad’s absenteeism, the concession was Dad taking us on Sunday drives. This didn’t necessarily provide more camera opportunities. The point of these family times were being together. We’d venture to the cheese company in Sonoma or another place within a two hour range and come back I the waning light, so even drifting off, I’d keep my eye on the blinking road dividers.

The “gong” was a Konika SLR film camera of the 1960s, solid metal, sometimes with a long lense attached, even better for the gong effect. The single-lense reflex camera, before the digital boom, used a mirror and prism system. When light was allowed to pass through the image could be captured. The Konika used a “roof pentaprism,” a system developed for the 1948 Duflex, patented in 1943 Hungary. The Japanese pentaprism SLR was born in 1955 with the Miranda T, followed by Pentax, Minolta, Zunow, Nikon, and Yashica. The Konica “Autoreflex” of 1965 used an external light meter. 

The action on a camera is deceptively simple, yet precise. However, the camera’s “holder,” the human taking the picture, needs to be still. The holder turns the focus ring, turns the film speed dial to set the ISO, then turns the shutter knob to the desired speech. Then he turns the aperture ring—this decides how far open the mirror will go. The hands move gently. With my father, the act of taking a photo prolonged minutes into what felt like hours. Not uncommon for SLRs, holders will stand (or sit) in one place until the shot is right—lighting, speed, everyone standing stock still. My brother was often a blur in family shots, unable to make himself into a temporary statue. Hyperactive they called it. Often my brother and I would conspire to make a face and hold our left arms up, curve the hand a bit. We called that the “Hah,” which came from a song we made up and sang on long car trips to a campground in summer. As much as our father tried to capture us looking normal, at the last minute we’d open our mouths, flash our upper teeth, and do “The Hah.” This would only cause our father to take another picture, messing it up for everyone. I never saw our father use a tripod, even when capturing a moose at the Snake River on our trip through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.

One picture taken which documents my father with the Gong around his neck was taken by a third party. The shot must have been sent to my parents by the taker. The background of the San Francisco Bay and cypress trees marks this as the Coit Tower viewing area, meaning a family or friend visit, showing visitors around the city. Judging from my mother’s red plush blazer, the visitors are Andre and Odilie from France. My mother’s big round sunglasses, wide shirt lapels, my father with his usual tan sport jacket, the camera strap thin black leather. The camera looks smaller than I remember it as a child. His gaze is set at some distant point, as is my mother’s. 

My father got control over his life the only way he knew how—errands and work were two. But with the camera, he also had control—over focus, light, settings. He got control in this way, while he couldn’t control what was happening with the family at home. My brother’s acting out, the loudness, yelling in the living room, and how one result was my father breaking my brother’s bedroom door with his foot because the door was locked. He also smashed some of my brother’s record albums. I played my part, teasing my brother until he beat my legs to bruises, and on long car trips our father reached around with one arm and grabbed my brother’s knee. “Stop, Mark,” he said, his Brooklyn accent treating the “A” vowel like “Mock” and without the “R” to soften the sound. With our father behind the camera, how much control did he have really? What do his pictures show? My brother and I do not comply. Others are more willing subjects. Not as many people used cameras in those days, and in many gatherings he was uniquely prepared to document. 

An action shot of my father with the camera was taken by me with my Instamatic camera during one of our family trips in the Monterey Bay Area. We had discovered the Asilomar conference grounds and State Park during the 1970s, on Dad’s first work conference there, where he brought us along. We frequented the place through the years aside on personal trips, struck by the natural beauty and historic, rustic buildings at the site, such as those by architects Julia Morgan and John Carl Warnecke. In this particular photo, he holds the Konika camera up to his right eye, hand on the front dial. His left eye is shut. You can see the left corner of his mouth in a grin. We must have been posing for him. The Instamatic camera had already been initiated at Girl Scout camp a few years earlier, when I accidentally dropped it down the “biffy,” or portable toilet, and somehow after fishing it out with the help of a counselor and a long pole rigged, it still worked. With this camera, I documented some of the same territory as my father, but from a different vantage point. 

This picture with him in his proverbial tan sport jacket, his full white head of hair, his square black framed glasses, is one of the few pictures of him with a camera, and the only one I have where he is in the act of using it. The object is not just a “gong” clanging against his chest—the action may be slow, like his car driving or walking, but it’s precise. He sees us through that lense. He watches, takes in the blur to focus, using the light to show who we are.