by stacey palevsky
staff writer
For years, Richard Nagler stalked the radiant stained glass windows at Temple Sinai in Oakland.
The professional photographer was enamored with the words on the tall, narrow windows. Benevolence. Life. Temperance. Providence.
Because Nagler is not just a picture kind of guy. He’s also a word man. For three decades, he has photographed a single word juxtaposed with a single person, often resulting in a photograph that is ironic, sad, joyful or humorous.
So he watched the windows. Years passed. Then, in February 2006, Nagler arrived at Temple Sinai for a bar mitzvah. And there it was. The moment he had waited for: One man, wearing a tallit and standing beneath one window, the one with the word “providence.”
Nagler bolted to his car and grabbed his camera, returned to find a spot in the pews. Luckily the man remained alone. Nagler carefully steadied his Nikon with a prayer book and, in the dim light of the sanctuary, clicked the shutter.
The resulting image is one of 80 Nagler has produced in the past 30 years, and is one of 30 on display through Dec. 1 at the George Krevsky Gallery 77 Geary St. in San Francisco. The exhibit is titled “Unspoken Word.”
“Each of the images is a page in my personal diary,” Nagler said. “I remember where I was and what I was thinking. Each one is precious to me.”
Nagler began photographing words and people by accident. On a cool summer day in 1977, he saw a woman standing in her apartment window, which was just above a crumbling sign that said “time.”
“I thought that was fascinating — I was struck by the power of the juxtaposition of a person with the word ‘time,’” he recalled. “It reflected mortality, life and death. But she was in the window for only a second or two, and I couldn’t get to my camera fast enough.”
So for the next few weeks he went back to the apartment on 14th Street in downtown Oakland, a neglected part of town in those years, in search of the shot but the woman was never there. Actually, she was there once, he said, but she saw Nagler on the street and quickly retreated. He tried to trick her with a device he bought from a magazine that allows a photographer to point the camera one direction and photograph in another direction, but it didn’t really work.
So he continued to go back. And he waited. And then, she appeared. He got two frames.
“It was such a relief, so exciting, when I finally got that image,” he said.
Of the 30 images in the “Unspoken Word,” nine were taken in Oakland, where Nagler lived for years (he now lives in Piedmont). The others were captured in Miami, Paris, London, New York and San Francisco.
“I think my pictures show respect for a single person on the street, and how beautiful they can make an image, accidentally,” he said.
The world is a messy place, Nagler observes, so there have been years when he hasn’t made a single “word picture,” as he has nicknamed them.
In most cases, Nagler first finds a word on a building or a street, and returns repeatedly — every day for weeks, if necessary — until one person is there and he can create the frame he envisioned: a homeless man in front of a sculpture that spells “here,” a young girl under a mural that says “now,” a red convertible driving past graffiti that spells “eternal.”
Sometimes the images happen without any planning, which is why Nagler always carries a camera (usually a digital Nikon SLR but sometimes a red, business-card-sized Casio point and shoot).
Once Nagler saw a woman standing under a bus shelter in San Francisco. It was raining. The poster on the shelter said “cover.” He quickly pulled over and through his passenger side window took her picture.
“I keep my windshield clean for that reason,” Nagler said, laughing. “Because you never know.”
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California