On opening day eve, I spent most of my day dealing with my framers from hell. It's been such a fiasco dealing with these people. Mozambique hasn't quite gotten down the idea of customer service, so it has been extra frustrating. In essence, I've been lobbying these people to hand over or just let me see my frames that they had promised me would be done last Saturday. They were finally ready to be picked up this morning. They packed them into my car quickly trying to beat the rain. When I got home and had a chance to really examine them it was a glaring mess.
First, they didn't properly mat them. They used black construction paper rather than the white bevel-cut traditional mat I had requested and paid for. Thank goodness I had my receipt with all of this documented along with their stamp (they're big into stamps in this country). Besides the "mat," there was crud inside the glass of virtually every picture such as sawdust, cardboard and paint chips, and the backs of the custom frames had been taped shut. The nominal mats were poorly cut with slice marks, crooked lines, and creases.
I returned to my framer with a Mozambican friend, who as a native Portuguese speaker with cultural prowess that I just don't have, was able to navigate through the layers of workers in the shop and get them to agree to do what they should have done in the first place. We had to negotiate the time that they would be done which was gut-wrenching because we were supposed to have hung the show this evening. They said they'd be done at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. I'll be there at 9:00.
I told the handymen I hired to help me hang the photos to meet me at the gallery tomorrow at noon. It's going to be an incredibly busy day hanging the show and preparing the gallery for the opening reception at 6:30. I did get the keys to the gallery and I do have two big pictures that I printed for the window front in place there. So, at least there will be something to see along with wine, food, cool programs, caption boards and a soundtrack.
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My Photo Manifesto
Beginning in 1993, I began working in newspapers - first as a writer at a small daily in Central California. There I switched to photography and moved to the United States/Mexico border in McAllen, Texas, to San Antonio, then Florida where I worked as a photographer and editor for the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group, and ultimately The New York Times itself as a news picture editor. My work history is diverse: jobs that I held during college include a telephone operator and an attractions host at Disneyland. I also played guitar in several punk bands in the late 80's in Los Angeles. After leaving the Times in 2005 to raise my two children (Thomas born in 2005 and Charles born in 2007) and follow my wife with her career overseas, I began work as a freelance photojournalist.
Throughout my career, I have worked on staffs and am much more of a newspaper man than an entrepreneurial, enterprising photographer. I have always known the institutions that I've worked for, the audiences we served, and was well skilled at maneuvering the political and bureaucratic red tape of a newsroom to get the most out of myself and the photographers that I managed and produce great journalism.
Although as an editor I have worked with top photographers around the world, I am somewhat of a fish out of water being on the other side of the fence as an independent photojournalist. I am not the best at editing and managing myself. I am still trying to find the best way to make the most out of my skills and use them to affect some kind of change as a journalist and international citizen. In this pursuit, I am looking to you, my classmates and faculty for guidance and honesty that I will reciprocate in this journal and course.
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Michael Barrientos
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