Hairspray

My almost six year old spent a good deal of her summer studying musicals. She spent her August upright, pantomiming her way through double features of Annie and Hairspray with a kind of hermetic focus, mouthing lyrics. Afterwards, she would sing along to the music in front of her mirror and gyrate to herself in earnest. She pit her volume against the soundtrack’s, as if foes dueling for the attention of whomever chances upon them. To walk by her bedroom in mid performance, one might think Ethel Merman had recast herself in the form of a three foot Chinese girl. Add to that her two most practiced roles are the leads in both Annie and Hairspray. Even if she grows up to be a theatre kid – like her sister – I’m trying to imagine a director casting an adopted child in the role of orphan Annie or a tiny Asian kid in the role of Tracy Turnblad, the heavy set white girl who dares to mix with blacks. Issues of appropriateness might arise. And yet, right now she performs both those roles quite convincingly in our living room. When she asked if for her upcoming birthday she could have a “Hairspray” party we countered with a quick dozen reasons why that might not be such a good idea. Down around six or seven on the list was the possibility (probability?) of a younger set of parents not having seen or known about the musical and then coming to find out that it’s really made for older kids. Adults even. And deals satirically with the serious issue of racial discrimination. Suffice to say, Hairspray is not the usual fare for six year old birthday parties.

More to the point, what if in researching said Hairspray birthday for kindergarteners, these same younger parents accidentally picked up the original Hairspray, directed by cult-famous director John Waters? That’s not the one starring in drag the more wholesome John Travolta. Waters’ is the more suggestive less Hollywood version, starring the wildly unconventional 300-pound transvestite Devine, a pioneer whose largesse paved the way for future obese drag queens. Tragically, Devine, who starred in many of Waters’ films, including Pink Flamingos and Polyester, died shortly after their 1988 cult classic Hairspray debuted.

Neither Erin Hasley nor I remember the circumstances of Joe having met and subsequently photographed John Waters in Provincetown in the summer of 1994. But, as socially reserved as Joe often was, he was also an opportunist. I imagine that, whatever the scenario of their encounter, Joe must have made enough of an impression to strike John Waters as a photographer who took his art seriously. Waters’ must have admired how this young, confident, tattooed photographer took quiet control of his set, directing the Director where and how to position himself for this series of portraits. There are the qualities of intimacy and trust in these photos that we see as the trademark of so much of Joe’s work.

We nixed the Hairspray birthday party before the idea inflated too large. My poor daughter had already enlisted my help as planner, someone who could design Hairspray games and deck the house in Hairspray regalia. Sorry, we told her, releasing the air from this ballooning dream. We’ll take five of your friends over to Build-a-Bear, we told her. That way we could keep our standing as reasonably responsible parents. Maybe for her sweet sixteen we’ll festoon the house with Devine balloons and throw a dance party.

A Revealing

On a warm, grey Saturday in August of 2004 Erin Hasley and I drove out to visit Carol and Joe at their home in Wrentham, Massachusetts. It had been about eight months since we all stood in Saint Edward’s church saying goodbye to their son. Carol fixed us some delicious chicken sandwiches for lunch, and we passed that afternoon trading Joey stories. It felt good to laugh with them. It was time for that and we all seemed willing to allow for it.

Erin and I spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through the stacks of photographs Joey had thematically stored in labeled boxes. Not surprising since everything the man owned had a place chiseled out for it. We were grateful. He took care of the initial organization for us, which was needed given his prodigious output. And yet, we felt with each lift of a box cover the removal of a casket lid. So many pictures, each with a memory, a story, a mood, a vision of his world, a sad remainder. For months we had been talking about putting together a show for Joey, possibly even a book. Carol and Joe were willing to support whatever project we would fashion, allowing us full access to their son’s basement studio. Take anything you can use, they said.

Hours of shuffling boxes, naming portraits, rubbing temples, and not knowing what to claim and what to leave behind left us limp. We sighed at each other with little left to say. It was simply too much.

Joe Sr. and Carol at Kim (Cafferelli) Marchetti and Paul Marchetti's wedding

And then Carol and Joe came downstairs. Take it all, they said, as if to lift the shroud they knew was weighing down the room. Maybe they sensed our weariness, or maybe we had worn out our welcome. We could have been there all night. It was too big a job. We thanked them profusely, flattened the back seat of my Golf, and loaded her up. With everything. Even his music – Bauhaus, Peter Murphy, Schuyler Heinkel – everything.

All we left were a couple of computers, whose contents, without a password, would always remain entombed.

Almost seven years have passed since we hauled away Joey’s black and whites. Seven and a half years since he passed. Over those years Erin and I have met many times at my house, where his work has resided, and we have waded tirelessly through his photos. We have separated and labeled. We have created spreadsheets and files. At times we laughed our asses off. Other times not. We have distinguished between must be seens and must never be seens. We have had over to the house Paola Savarino and Giorgio Della Terza to survey the work in which both of them figure so prominently. They were good friends of Joey, Giorgio his close confidant, Paola his artistic mentor.
Giorgio Della Terza and Paola Savarino

Erin and I have enjoyed many splendid lunches together (thanks to Rosie)and planned for shows. And yet, we have been delayed by the immediacy of our ongoing lives and wearied by the ever-conflicting notions of whether to hoist the dead or allow him rest.

In February of 2007, Erin curated an exhibit of a selection of Joe’s photographs and video at Piazza Cenci 56 in Rome, Italy. It was a show organized in conjunction with Rhode Island School of Design’s European Honors Program, in which Erin and Joe both took part during the school year of 1994-95. “He returned several times to Italy,” Erin writes on the show’s invitation card, “drove the Autostrada fearlessly, and documented his travels with photographs and video.” Many of Joe and Erin’s classmates and friends attended, as did current Honors Program students, as did members of Erin’s family. In fact, many of those attendees helped in the transport, repair, and hanging of the works. For Erin, it was an enormous achievement, one built on faith and reliance, calling on past and current participants of the Program to help pull it all together. It shows what a community of like-minded people can do when honoring one of their own.




















Both sides of the Rome Show invitation

Erin’s curatorial debut was entitled “Altro Sara Svelato,” or “More Will Be Revealed.” It was an expression that Joe often used during their program in Rome back in the fall of 1994. “If he was uncertain or at a crossroads,” Erin explains in the show’s leaflet, “- whenever patience was needed - Joe would say, ‘More will be revealed.’” The Rome show was a long process brought to completion for Erin. Its beginning, middle, and end were expertly documented in her accompanying PowerPoint put to her own music. There is now a very important stone there that marks his spot forever with this Program, with this country, home to his ancestry. But more importantly, home to where he realized artistic happiness. The Rome show was one of the nicest gifts anyone has ever given.

This blog – a virtual gallery of photos and essays - will also have a beginning, middle, and end. It will be a project that attempts to feed off the energy created by Erin’s show, an attempt at another means of making good on Joe’s promise.

Joe and Erin en route to Amy Custance and Paul Hamilton’s wedding, where Joe was the wedding photographer. 1995.

It would be fitting for his saying – more will be revealed - to ring prophetic and recurrent, as he has left behind for us so many images, so many memories, so many stories to tell. Whatever plans Erin and I originally had, the exercise of uncovering Joey’s photos has always felt communal. It is my hope that this is a place where friends and family, acquaintances and admirers of Joe can view his work, talk about it, celebrate it.

The photos included in this project might ring nostalgic for those who favor the backward glance: an array of portraits, landscapes, and stills taken primarily in the eighties and nineties. For Joe, this was a period of experimentation, destruction, rehabilitation, friendships, self-discovery, and entrance into the art world. My narrative accompaniments to these photographs are associative, as a friend and follower of his work. Joe and I sometimes talked about doing a project together, his pictures with my words. We did a little bit of that over the years, but maybe this blog in some way can be the accrual of those plans made long ago. I look forward to working with him again and welcome whoever wants to join us.

Joe and Matt (me with hair) at Watertown apartment, 1986