Popular Searches
Print
E-mail
Comment
Rate
Share
Public invited to hear Pakay discuss his work
 |
| Right, James Baldwin stirs his drink at an Istanbul teahouse, circa 1964. (Sedat Pakay photo) |
Event takes place Sunday
By John Mason
CLAVERACK — One of Columbia County’s hidden treasures, photographer/filmmaker Sedat Pakay, will show one of his films and a series of photographs, and talk about his work at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Claverack Free Library, Routes 23B and 9H.
The event will begin with a showing of “James Baldwin: From Another Place,” a 12-minute film Pakay shot in 1970 and completed in 1973. Baldwin is the great African-American novelist who wrote such works as “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” “Another Country,” and “The Fire Next Time.”
Pakay, who is originally from Turkey, met Baldwin in Istanbul in 1964, when the photographer was a young, long-haired college student. In 1965, he took hundreds of pictures of the writer.
Pakay then went off to Yale University, where he studied with Walker Evans and earned a master of fine arts degree. In 1968 he began working in film.
“I thought photography came to a certain limit for me,” Pakay said, in conversation over his kitchen table Tuesday. “I wanted photographs to tell stories. Film had sound and motion. I was very taken by [filmmakers Francois] Truffaut, [Jean Luc] Godard, [Eric] Rohmer and [Michelangelo] Antonioni.”
In 1970 he returned to Istanbul with a movie camera to record Baldwin in motion.
After its 1973 release, the film had some great initial success when it was shown at the Chicago International Film Festival and elsewhere. Pakay still shows it on college campuses, most recently at Northwestern University and, in March, at Kenesaw College.
But its notoriety should increase greatly in the next few weeks, when the book “James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile,” by Magdalena J. Zaborowska, from Duke University Press, hits the stores. The book draws liberally on Zaborowska’s interviews of Pakay about his conversations with and memories of Baldwin. Each chapter is headed with a Pakay photo of Baldwin, taken during the period, roughly from 1963 to 1973, the writer spent in Istanbul.
“Baldwin chose Turkey because it was a place he could work without interruption,” Pakay told the Register-Star. “In New York, everyone pulled at him — ‘Jimmy, you have to come to dinner.’
“I asked him about his homosexuality,” Pakay said. “He connected it to loving. If white and black people could discover this connection, it was not an issue of black and white.”
Zaborowska’s book begins with a tribute to Pakay’s work that reveals her debt to him.
“‘Perhaps only someone who is outside of the States realizes that it’s impossible to get out,’ James Baldwin’s voiceover proclaims in a short film by the Turkish director and photographer, Sedat Pakay, ‘James Baldwin: From Another Place’ (1973). Pakay’s little-known cinematic gem records the writer’s movements through the city of Istanbul over a three-day period in May 1970 and frames Baldwin’s assertions with seductive photography of private interviews, city streets and a boat ride on the Bosporus.
“Like no other existing documentary, the black-and-white film captures the profound paradox of Baldwin’s transatlantic vantage point by showing how he both belongs and remains an outsider in the teeming, half-European, half-Asian Turkish metropolis,” Zaborowska writes. “Like Pakay’s camera, this project attempts to bring the conflicting and often contradictory depictions of Baldwin’s person and writings together.”
Pakay’s footage and photos capture a more relaxed and light-hearted Baldwin than those familiar with his work might expect.
“He was a man everyone thought was so angry, as he was in his work,” Pakay said. “But he enjoyed laughing, he was extremely witty, he had a way with words.” In the photographs, the author is seen frying fish, clowning around in huge glasses or asleep in bed.
One picture shows him with the Harlem Renaissance artist Beauford Delaney, who took Baldwin under his wing when he was a homeless aspiring writer. Another shows him playing cards while taking a break from writing the screenplay for a movie of the life of Malcolm X.
Baldwin was hired to write a dramatization of Malcolm’s life, but that was an ill-fated project.
“The producers wanted him to simplify things,” Pakay said. “He didn’t want to do it. Left.”
Arnold Perl, the author of the play that became “Fiddler on the Roof,” who had been working with Baldwin on the screenplay, convinced Warner Brothers to turn it into a documentary, and to bring Pakay on as a picture researcher, sending him a message, “Buy yourself a bottle of champagne on me — you’re hired.”
“It was wonderful to go to Paris and be fed by Warner Brothers,” Pakay said. He traveled throughout Europe, as well as Tunisia and Istanbul in search of usable footage. The film was released in 1974.
Following the showing of the Baldwin film Sunday, Pakay will present a slide show of 10 or 12 of his prints, including portraits of photographers Walker Evans and Edward Steichen, novelist Doris Lessing and actress Laura Esterman, as well as some of his photos of the people and landscape of Turkey.
There’s a photo of abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, taken a year before he committed suicide; “he was a very depressed, dark man,” Pakay said.
Another subject, Walker Evans, “was still not as famous as he later became. I liked the way he looked at the world: Very direct, unmanipulated, showing people in their pride. He didn’t look at Alabama sharecroppers as the scum of the earth.”
A few years ago, Pakay was hospitalized for lymphoma. He underwent operations, chemotherapy and depression.
“I was hoping something would happen that would get me out of this abyss,” he said. And something did. Emily Upham of Germantown asked him to be the photographer for a book on aging and loss.
They’ve been traveling to places like Woodstock, Dobbs Ferry and New York City to photograph women authors and artists like Gail Godwin, Erica Jong, Vivian Gornick, Tina Howe, Ntozake Shange, Jane Alexander, Sharon Olds and Abigail Thomas, who have had to deal with loss and aging. The book blends Pakay’s portraits with narratives by the artists and interviews by Upham.
“It’s a fun project,” he said. “It brought me back to life after the disease.” The book is due out from Simon and Schuster next year.
The challenge is the same as it was 40 years ago, catching a much-photographed face in the intimacy of real life, as in his most famous portrait, of Baldwin stirring tea in an Istanbul teahouse.
“My style is close, without the glossiness of a professional photo,” he said. “In action.”
To reach reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2272, or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.
By John Mason
CLAVERACK — One of Columbia County’s hidden treasures, photographer/filmmaker Sedat Pakay, will show one of his films and a series of photographs, and talk about his work at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Claverack Free Library, Routes 23B and 9H.
The event will begin with a showing of “James Baldwin: From Another Place,” a 12-minute film Pakay shot in 1970 and completed in 1973. Baldwin is the great African-American novelist who wrote such works as “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” “Another Country,” and “The Fire Next Time.”
Pakay, who is originally from Turkey, met Baldwin in Istanbul in 1964, when the photographer was a young, long-haired college student. In 1965, he took hundreds of pictures of the writer.
Pakay then went off to Yale University, where he studied with Walker Evans and earned a master of fine arts degree. In 1968 he began working in film.
“I thought photography came to a certain limit for me,” Pakay said, in conversation over his kitchen table Tuesday. “I wanted photographs to tell stories. Film had sound and motion. I was very taken by [filmmakers Francois] Truffaut, [Jean Luc] Godard, [Eric] Rohmer and [Michelangelo] Antonioni.”
In 1970 he returned to Istanbul with a movie camera to record Baldwin in motion.
After its 1973 release, the film had some great initial success when it was shown at the Chicago International Film Festival and elsewhere. Pakay still shows it on college campuses, most recently at Northwestern University and, in March, at Kenesaw College.
But its notoriety should increase greatly in the next few weeks, when the book “James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile,” by Magdalena J. Zaborowska, from Duke University Press, hits the stores. The book draws liberally on Zaborowska’s interviews of Pakay about his conversations with and memories of Baldwin. Each chapter is headed with a Pakay photo of Baldwin, taken during the period, roughly from 1963 to 1973, the writer spent in Istanbul.
“Baldwin chose Turkey because it was a place he could work without interruption,” Pakay told the Register-Star. “In New York, everyone pulled at him — ‘Jimmy, you have to come to dinner.’
“I asked him about his homosexuality,” Pakay said. “He connected it to loving. If white and black people could discover this connection, it was not an issue of black and white.”
Zaborowska’s book begins with a tribute to Pakay’s work that reveals her debt to him.
“‘Perhaps only someone who is outside of the States realizes that it’s impossible to get out,’ James Baldwin’s voiceover proclaims in a short film by the Turkish director and photographer, Sedat Pakay, ‘James Baldwin: From Another Place’ (1973). Pakay’s little-known cinematic gem records the writer’s movements through the city of Istanbul over a three-day period in May 1970 and frames Baldwin’s assertions with seductive photography of private interviews, city streets and a boat ride on the Bosporus.
“Like no other existing documentary, the black-and-white film captures the profound paradox of Baldwin’s transatlantic vantage point by showing how he both belongs and remains an outsider in the teeming, half-European, half-Asian Turkish metropolis,” Zaborowska writes. “Like Pakay’s camera, this project attempts to bring the conflicting and often contradictory depictions of Baldwin’s person and writings together.”
Pakay’s footage and photos capture a more relaxed and light-hearted Baldwin than those familiar with his work might expect.
“He was a man everyone thought was so angry, as he was in his work,” Pakay said. “But he enjoyed laughing, he was extremely witty, he had a way with words.” In the photographs, the author is seen frying fish, clowning around in huge glasses or asleep in bed.
One picture shows him with the Harlem Renaissance artist Beauford Delaney, who took Baldwin under his wing when he was a homeless aspiring writer. Another shows him playing cards while taking a break from writing the screenplay for a movie of the life of Malcolm X.
Baldwin was hired to write a dramatization of Malcolm’s life, but that was an ill-fated project.
“The producers wanted him to simplify things,” Pakay said. “He didn’t want to do it. Left.”
Arnold Perl, the author of the play that became “Fiddler on the Roof,” who had been working with Baldwin on the screenplay, convinced Warner Brothers to turn it into a documentary, and to bring Pakay on as a picture researcher, sending him a message, “Buy yourself a bottle of champagne on me — you’re hired.”
“It was wonderful to go to Paris and be fed by Warner Brothers,” Pakay said. He traveled throughout Europe, as well as Tunisia and Istanbul in search of usable footage. The film was released in 1974.
Following the showing of the Baldwin film Sunday, Pakay will present a slide show of 10 or 12 of his prints, including portraits of photographers Walker Evans and Edward Steichen, novelist Doris Lessing and actress Laura Esterman, as well as some of his photos of the people and landscape of Turkey.
There’s a photo of abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, taken a year before he committed suicide; “he was a very depressed, dark man,” Pakay said.
Another subject, Walker Evans, “was still not as famous as he later became. I liked the way he looked at the world: Very direct, unmanipulated, showing people in their pride. He didn’t look at Alabama sharecroppers as the scum of the earth.”
A few years ago, Pakay was hospitalized for lymphoma. He underwent operations, chemotherapy and depression.
“I was hoping something would happen that would get me out of this abyss,” he said. And something did. Emily Upham of Germantown asked him to be the photographer for a book on aging and loss.
They’ve been traveling to places like Woodstock, Dobbs Ferry and New York City to photograph women authors and artists like Gail Godwin, Erica Jong, Vivian Gornick, Tina Howe, Ntozake Shange, Jane Alexander, Sharon Olds and Abigail Thomas, who have had to deal with loss and aging. The book blends Pakay’s portraits with narratives by the artists and interviews by Upham.
“It’s a fun project,” he said. “It brought me back to life after the disease.” The book is due out from Simon and Schuster next year.
The challenge is the same as it was 40 years ago, catching a much-photographed face in the intimacy of real life, as in his most famous portrait, of Baldwin stirring tea in an Istanbul teahouse.
“My style is close, without the glossiness of a professional photo,” he said. “In action.”
To reach reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2272, or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.
Share this Article
 |
 |
|
| Register-Star to introduce weekend edition at the end of the month | Volunteers launching radio station seek ways to serve community |
Article Rating
Reader Comments
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of registerstar.com.
You must register with a valid email to post comments. Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Registered users sign in here: |
Become a Registered User |
