Meeting Lydia Clarke Heston
On the power of words and images and opportunities
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
Oddly I don’t have a ton of photographer heroes and of those whom I admire and respect, I’ve only really met one. I’m convinced that legendary concert photographer Mick Rock took my photo as I took his at Lollapalooza. I knew all the Chicago photographers back in the day. From newspapermen like John Kim who dabbled in concerts, or Paul Natkin and Barry Brecheisen who were the only two to fully make living off of that work in a city of millions. I once saw Albert Maysles do a Q&A after a screening of the famed documentary film of the Rolling Stones tragic concert at Altamont, “Gimme Shelter” he produced with his brother. Maysles said something that stuck with me to the point it was my email signature for a while. The job of a photographer or photo journalist, he said, is to “see what everyone else sees, but notice more.”
Yup. That’s it. Right there. Notice more. That’s not as easy as it sounds.
One of my other favorite photographer lines, however, is even more pertinent to me personally. This is that story.
I was assigned to live in Willard Residential College at Northwestern. I requested and applied for that after doing a prospective weekend there. I stayed with a guy named Ed Herbstamn who was part of an improv group on campus called Mee-ow. So yeah, he was fun and funny. He went on to Second City and is now a legit actor and I hadn’t thought of him in a long time before I sat down to write this and then went down a rabbit hole of Mee-ow history. Lotta familiar names to everyone (Seth Myers, Julia Louis Dreyfus) and to me (Paul was in the band, Chickpea and Melissa worked on staff and crew).
Willard could be the subject of a million stories in itself. Freshman year, my friend Fred suggested I run for President. And I did. And I won the election. It was the first time I had ever run for anything. Also the first speech I ever gave. 292 people lived in Willard and most of them showed up for the elections. I had some rough notes on a small piece of paper and just went for it. Many of my friends also ran for the exec board or one of the floor representatives. All-in the dorm government was about 30 people and had a decent-sized budget to play with. Running that was quite a challenge for a freshman but I got through it with help from friends and mentors.
Willard hosted social events, events with a more academic (loosely defined) focus and even offered actual classes through the University. This was due to the status as a Residential College, which meant we had faculty advisors and mentors. That’s how I met people like classics professors Carl Petry and Dan Garrison. Or Bill Anthony, who taught the Willard Folklore class, where we learned techniques of oral history by recording Willard’s illustrious history.
It’s also how I became more acquainted with Shep Shanley, the director of undergraduate admissions, whose 50-year career only recently ended and Willardites pitched in for a plaque that now hangs in a common room that is essentially where room 121 used to be before a remodel.
Shep came up to me at a faculty barbecue early in my presidency. He approached me and asked if I was the new president. I asked why he thought so and he said, “you just seem to be in charge,” which was a vote of confidence that was much needed and has stayed with me all these years.
One event we hosted featured a Willard alumna and accomplished photographer, Lydia Clarke. She was an actress and traveled the world taking photographs, which were published in leading magazines and shown in galleries. Since many of the images were quite foreign (literally) to their audiences, she stressed the importance of well-written captions.
“If a picture alone is worth 1,000 words,” she said, “imagine the power of a picture plus 100 words.”
Her husband was also a pretty well known Northwestern alumnus, actor Charlton Heston. He tagged along and introduced her in that famous voice of Moses from the Ten Commandments. I got his autograph as he passed through the lobby, but someone (cough, Meredith) tore it in half when she was young.
In retrospect, I should have had her sign something too on the way out. But as someone who is both a photographer and a writer, thinking about the power of combining those things struck a chord. Lou Reed always was credited as “words and music by Lou Reed,” and I adapted that to “words and images by Matt Carmichael.”
There are several forms of privilege here. One, the honor and privilege of being able to lead Willard for a year, joining a long tradition of zaniness. Two, the privilege of attending someplace like Northwestern, where I got to have run-ins with all kinds of folks like comedian Denis Leary, or Princess Dianna, or civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, or Lydia Clarke Heston and her date. And there’s a lot of patriarchy privilege baked into both of those.
So it was impossible to take advantage of all of the opportunities. But also important to take advantage of as many as possible. True then as it is now.