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Profile: Behind the Images
Sonja
Bullaty and Angelo Lomeo
By Noella Ballenger
Have
you ever wondered about the professionals behind the cameras?
Who are they? What do they see? How do they see?
How do they make their images work—and why?
Sonja Bullaty and Angelo Lomeo, a husband-and-wife photography team,
represent two of the best. Sonja
died on October 5, 2000, but Angelo continues to share his wife’s images as
well as his own in a new book called The
World Trade Center Remembered.
I
first met Sonja Bullaty and Angelo Lomeo at a conference in which they were
presenting their work. They were
seasoned professionals with international reputations, and yet they seemed
shy--until I saw them with cameras in their hands.
When they were handling their equipment or talking about their work,
instead of describing them as “shy,” I selected words like “remarkable,”
“direct,” “fun,” “intense,” and “visual.”
However, in order to understand these remarkably talented people, we need
to meet them as they began their long, fantastic life of image making.
Sonja
Bullaty was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and was given her first camera when
she was fourteen years old. The
gift was a consolation for being forced to quit school and most other normal
teenage activities due to the pending war.
“I have loved the camera ever since,” she explained later, “because
it gave me joy and it gave me life. In
the following difficult years I had no camera but often saw things indelibly
etched on my mind. Perhaps to this
day I search for some of those missing images.”
She survived the concentration camps and, after the war, became an
assistant to renowned Czech photographer Josef Sudek.
In 1947, she came to New York City, where she met and married Angelo
Lomeo.
Angelo
Lomeo, a second-generation American, grew up in an Italian-speaking household in
New York City’s Hells Kitchen. He
started taking pictures at age nine, using a Kodak Brownie.
As he says, “From that moment on, it was magic!”
Lomeo studied painting and design at New York’s School of Industrial
Art. After completing a stint in
the US Army in Germany, he returned to New York to pursue a career in
professional photography.
Bullaty
and Lomeo worked and traveled together all over the world.
Their photographs are widely exhibited and have been included in The
International Center of Photography (New York City), the Metropolitan Museum of
Art (New York City), the George Eastman House (Rochester, NY), the UMPRUM Museum
(Prague, Czechoslovakia), as well as in many other public and private
collections. Their work has
appeared in many publications including Life,
Time and Audubon
magazines. They have published
seven books, including their critically acclaimed Tuscany
and Provence.
Both were featured in Landscape
Photograph: The Art and Technique of Eight Modern Masters (Amphoto).
Their
talent for exploring light, color, and the essence of a place has earned the
team their international reputation. To understand the feelings and imagery
woven into a site, they may return time and time again.
Persistence in their quest to fulfill their visions is a cornerstone of
the way in which they work. Lomeo
is a master of light. He sees it in
unique ways, ways that sometimes baffled even his wife.
In one interview, the couple recounted a time when they were on
assignment for Life
Magazine and Lomeo spotted a man in a canoe.
The canoe held a cask of wine in the bow, and the light was milky white.
“I spent an hour climbing down a bank to shoot him,” Lomeo recalled.
Bullaty was stuck waiting in a hot car and couldn’t imagine why her
husband was insistent about capturing the shot.
She remembered resenting it. “The
photo is now hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” she added sheepishly.
Both
photographers are known as outstanding technicians, famed for understanding
their cameras, film, what works, and what doesn’t.
They are also noted for their flexibility and their uncanny ability to
scrape through to the very essence or heart of an image.
Yet, steel lies beneath the soft touch of their images.
It is the strong fiber that brought them through a confrontation in 1968
when the Communists invaded Czechoslovakia.
Bullaty and Lomeo had been visiting family and friends when the
saber-rattling began. Many major
journalists crowded into Prague. A
week passed, and nothing happened, although the Communists were still massed on
the border. The journalists left.
Then, the communists invaded and took over the country.
Bullaty and Lomeo were there, taking images.
Later, they smuggled the film out in the bottom of a bushel of apples.
When they were ready to cross the border, Lomeo stood beside their car,
trying to talk the guards into giving them permission to leave.
As the exchange continued, one of the guards shoved a gun against
Lomeo’s chest. In that moment,
his wife secretly captured the shot. Lomeo
was eventually shoved back into the car, and they were allowed to pass.
The film that they shot of the Prague Invasion and the Czech Freedom
Fighters was seen around the world.
Photographers
like Bullaty and Lomeo do what they do because in their world, there is no other
choice. They have an unquenchable
curiosity and zest for life. Life’s
experiences have much to do with the way they see and what they choose to
reflect. This art of seeing and
interpreting isn’t necessarily a formal thing that professional photographers
try to do; it just happens. And,
when the particular vision happens repeatedly, it becomes a fingerprint of
style.
Lomeo
likes to approach every landscape as simply and directly as possible.
His eye looks for the way light and shadow play on the scene and how they
change and mold the image. He is a
great admirer of the paintings of Edward Hopper for his use of light.
He says, “To make a truly strong photograph of a landscape, I try to
wait until all the conditions are right and can be distilled in one moment.”
He isn’t hesitant to put a sign of human presence in the natural
setting. His wry sense of humor and
his strong sense of design will occasionally allow him to include a road sign in
a landscape. In this way, he seems
to be linking man to the natural world.
Bullaty’s
photographs speak of poetry. There
is a quality and tempo that reflect her love of life and all that can be found
in this existence. She
described her work, saying, “I prefer not to manipulate things.
The world is exciting, and to capture what is there is a tremendous
challenge.” She went on to say,
“When you have seen the depths of horror, you are so much more responsive to
enormous joy. I have often felt
that the reason I celebrate life and beauty is precisely because I have seen so
much pain and ugliness.”
Over
the years, in many of their published books, Bullaty and Lomeo have written a
great deal about their photography and how they approach an image. They describe
composition as a distilling process. The photographer needs to determine the
mood, decide the main purpose of the photograph, decide what is the most
important subject, and gather a feeling or sense of the place.
They suggest that the photographer first, do an overview, then go into
that overview to bring out the design quality of the place, portray specific
color harmonies, do the overall patterns, and show the variety of what s/he sees
(the lines and shapes) with geometric clarity.
They advise using color to create strong visual impact.
Light is the most important aspect, that and taking the time to visually
feel what is being seen. Bullaty
quoted her friend and mentor Josef Sudak in his admonition to learn to hurry,
slowly.
Bullaty
passed away just over a year ago after a long struggle with cancer.
Her life mate has had to learn to cope alone.
There have been times when it has been difficult for him to pick up a
camera or even to leave his home on a trip.
But our story doesn’t end here. When
the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001, the tragedy seemed
to accentuate Angelo’s grief over Sonja’s passing.
Knowing what the families and loved ones of the people who died that day
would be going through, Lomeo remembered the good times he and his wife had
enjoyed as they photographed the World Trade Center.
He raced to the drawer holding their New York photographs and began to
select the special ones. He
pictured a book that would be a positive remembrance.
Abbeville Press shared his vision. Angelo’s
own words, as written in the photographer’s dedication of The
World Trade Center Remembered, say it best:
“I
dedicate this book to Sonja Bullaty, my wife and partner, who gave me fifty
beautiful years of love and togetherness that I will treasure within my heart
for the rest of my life. Sonja died on October 5, 2000, after a long and painful
battle with cancer. It was through
Sonja’s love for New York City and our persistence that this collection of
photographs of the World Trade Center, taken from every direction and spanning
its twenty-three year history, came to be. As we traveled through the city, we
always noticed the towers, standing, gloriously tall and appreciated their
presence welcoming us back after a flight from out west.
The
towers were more than buildings; they stood for the greatness of New York City
and America. And I believe the World Trade Center will return again in all its
splendor as proof that terrorists cannot destroy the American spirit of freedom
and democracy.
These
photographs are a testament to our great city and a record of a time gone by
that will never be forgotten. I believe that the victims of the World Trade
Center did not die, as they will live within our hearts forever.
--- Angelo Lomeo”
Author’s note: I greatly appreciate Angelo Lomeo’s assistance in making the materials used in writing this story available to me and for his permission to reprint his dedication from The World Trade Center Remembered (images by Sonja Bullaty and Angelo Lomeo and the text by Paul Goldberger).
You can find out more about The World Trade Center Remembered by going to: http://www.abbeville.com/wtcremembered/
Or you can buy the book right now by clicking
here.
Noella Ballenger leads photographic
workshop/tours to special locations in the West. Visit her site in Apogee Photo Magazine at www.noellaballenger.com or send her an
e-mail at Noella1B@aol.com
Write to her at P.O. Box 457, La Canada, CA 91012, call: (818) 954-0933 or fax: (818) 954-0910 for more information on her workshop/tours.
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