Mr. Leatherman

It’s a dull gray morning, droplets fall from the roof, the morning fog having condensed on the roof as it passes by. So, I am going to write about this image, one of my current favorites called Drawin a Bead.

Every part of this image except the man, the gun and his shadow was shot a few years ago at Mt. Ranier National Park in Washington state. Susan and I had been visiting my sister Teresa and niece, Mickey, in Olympia and we made a day-long visit to the Park. It was glorious, the bright sun, high mountain meadows and the snow-capped peaks surrounding were stunning to this flat-footed flatlander.

As with most of my composite images, I go back to the work of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers, whose work is in the public domain. You would certainly recognize the Depression era work of Dorothea Lange, arguably the most famous of these photographers. The FSA photographer who originally shot this rifleman was Russell Lee. The subject is only listed as Mr. Leatherman. His worn blue jeans and less-than-white shirt tell me he works hard. The euphemism to draw a bead on something means to target or take aim at something. Whatever Mr. Leatherman was aiming at is outside our frame.

I like this image because it feels genuine. If you could travel back in time a short while, you might have stumbled upon this mountain scene. Technically, the sun and shade look right, he looks like he belongs here. The greatest difficulty was placing his shadow on the landscape and getting the correct degree of shadiness (sorry for the technical jargon). And Mr. Leatherman isn’t posing, he is in action. In the next second you might see a puff of smoke and a sharp report from his rifle.

I like this image because in those days, I like to romanticize, we lived closer to the Earth, planted, hunted and lived on the earth. As my son has said, I may have been born in the wrong century but knowing myself as I do, I would last about a week before begging for the creature comforts I am now afforded. But I wonder about the life of Mr. Leatherman, if he found comforts of his own, a wife and children, a small bit of land to call his own, if he enjoyed the work and beauty of his day. In that way, we might be much alike, and that, especially, feels good to me.