In December of 1980 I was in London. I was housesitting for friends from Block Island. Also staying at the house were a couple from Oxford University. One was a Rhodes Scholar from the United States and the other an English doctoral candidate. One sunny Sunday afternoon we decided to walk to see Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery. I brought my camera with me. I was using a Mamiya C330. I took a few photos along the way.
As we talked during the walk, the English student told a story that shape much of my life in education. He was taking an exam on Paradise Lost. After he wrote what the professor had said in class and had assumed that is what the professor wanted to see, the professor handed it back to him with a failing grade. He did not understand how the professor could give him such a poor grade. He asked why he got such a poor grade on the final exam. The professor told him that he already knew what he thought about the book, but he wanted to know what his student thought. He said it change his entire approach to learning. From then on, he asked himself what he thought about things. I tried when I went into teaching years later to get my students to take that approach. I wanted to have students who thought and analyzed with their own ideas. Reading other’s analysis is merely a springboard to your own great ideas.
Meanwhile, we arrived at out destination. There was an elderly woman visiting the next grave over. I spontaneously took this photograph as she touched the stone. The little edge of the grave in the corner is Karl Marx’s resting place. This photograph was different than any I had done before. Maybe the first one that had real human emotion in it. It seemed that my own ideas of photography were beginning to come to life. This was the beginning of my life after formal photographic education.
It is strange how conversations can have long lasting impacts on people, and we often do not know it. This one day did have a long impact, from that professor, to his student, to me, and on to my students. Independent thinking was given new value. Always ask, “What do I think?”
A simple day, a long walk, a good conversation, and a lifetime of impact.