Thomas Dublin

George Harvan

As soon I was through with my business in New York, I just put the film in the camera and started photographing people on the streets of New York City. I was fascinated with the people of New York, how they were scurrying from one place to the next, almost oblivious to each other. I thought if I could try to show these people living in New York City on the streets, and you often wonder where they were going and what they were doing. I decided to start to photograph them. I would take two or three rolls of film, usually, when I was there -- into the night. I got on the bus at the Port Authority building, and that's where I got the bus to go home. So I photographed in that general area, also around Times Square and Fifth Avenue, and up Sixth Avenue. "At first, I was shooting the photographs kind of straight. I was trying to get sharp images. The camera was very unobtrusive. In other words, I kind of hid it. I usually shot from the hip. Unless it was something that I could see that I could photograph and capture, [then] I put the camera up to my eye. But most of the pictures I shot from the hip, or from the front. And that way, I was able to get more spontaneous pictures of people. As I moved along in this project, I started to move more and more into the abstract, and using slower shutter speeds. Then I was getting almost abstract images-images that didn't even look like human beings anymore. They were taking on dual shapes and different forms, especially later at night when it got a little darker, and my light was falling, and I was shooting slower and slower -- like maybe a fifteenth of a second, or sometimes a half of a second. I was quite proud of those pictures. I never did anything, really, with them, but I always thought that was another nice project that I was able to complete, and show some results."

2m30s

Thomas Dublin

George Harvan

As I mentioned before, I kind of got the feeling then that I should continue photographing the miners, because eventually I knew they were going to be finished, deep mining in the valley would be finished. So, every opportunity I got -- vacation time -- if I took vacation time, I went in. Weekends, Saturdays, if they were in, I would go in. As I knew most of them personally, they were my age -- maybe a little older, a few years older -- but I knew them. My relationship with those miners was very close, so I could do anything. I could take any type of pictures. I could walk in on them anytime. They knew what I was doing. And that was a very great benefit to me, to get real pictures, not posed pictures -- but pictures of actual working conditions.

1m5s

Thomas Dublin

George Harvan

Oh, and then I did a series of pictures about the time on the country auction, in the Dutch country. And that was very interesting. Then I concentrated mostly on faces, the Pennsylvania Dutch. You know, this part of the country has a lot of auctions, farm auctions, and in the '60s and early '70s, there was a lot of farm auctions. When they would advertise a farm, it gave you the opportunity to roam around people's farms and see their sheds and see the people who are there, and who owned it. . . . There was so many beautiful farms and so many beautiful people. All the older people, the expressions you would get, and their dress, and the way they reacted to auctions, generally.

1m10s

Thomas Dublin

George Harvan

When I started the Amish, I was the same way. Every chance, I'd go down -- vacation time, weekends. I would find newspapers with Amish auctions, or something like that. I would go there and I would photograph them. And I had a number of pictures published on the Amish -- Grace Hoyer, which is John Updike's mother -- I had a series of pictures, she did the story and I did photographs for Travel and Camera. And Liberty magazine. But I always did them with -- I never really poked my camera in their faces. They don't like people photographing them. So I either did it with a long lens, which is sneaky in a way. Or a hidden camera. I don't think they minded it so much, as long as the camera wasn't exposed and they weren't exposed to the camera.

. . . It made me feel good, because you don't want to invade anyone's privacy just to take a photograph. But sometimes you do get the feeling that everything is so beautiful and the people are so beautiful, with their clothes and their way of life is so different. When you get into photography, you get the feeling you should do something about it. But you've got to do it with -- have a certain amount of respect for the people. I enjoyed the pictures of the Amish.

2m8s

Thomas Dublin

George Harvan

On my days off, I had an old Rolleicord, and I started to photograph the people on the streets, the homeless people, and the old people, the Japanese veterans with their legs cut off, walking down the street. I think it was there that this whole documentary-style type of photography kind of evolved at that time, for me. What drew me to take these type of pictures and disregard other types of photographs, taking pictures of the ships in the harbor or something, I concentrated on the people on the streets of Tokyo. I think that was the beginning of my photographic life. I actually felt then that this was what I want to do with my life.

1m