Photo by Lady Kae:
This picture of Liza as a baby captures the beginning of Rosie and my journey of raising our family on the road. Like fairground entertainers throughout history we traveled from festival to festival, while carving out a family life in our home on wheels.
We now live full time in Minneapolis but the road often calls out for us to return.
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This festival season Kae Lynn Durham Caston has been posting to Facebook some great vintage MN Renaissance Festival photos, including this one at The Feast of Fantasy. I remember that day she was attempting to take our picture when she became part of the show. Rosie snatched Kae’s camera out of her hands and turned the lens on her.
I love this picture because of that memory.
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Photo by Marc Norberg:
I wear many hats. I love to perform, but I also love to write, direct, and teach. Some days I feel like a juggler in a plate-spinning act struggling to keep everything in the air.
Life is Good.
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I first saw this picture in a box of photos submitted to the MN Renaissance Festival annual photography contest. Later this same photo showed up in my dad’s collection, which is a little bit of a mystery.
When he was alive my father never told me that he entered a photo he took of me in a contest, but I’m honored if he did. What ever the truth is it beautifully captures a moment in time at Witchwood Stage.
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Photo by Warren Brant:
After performing at The Children’s Theatre Company I caught the performance bug. My father who had been encouraging me was not happy with my career choice in the beginning. Pictured here is the first time my dad ever came to see my show. It was the summer of 1979, which marked the beginning of my full-time career in the performing arts.
When I started the show my dad vanished from the area. I went through the performance a little heart-broken that he didn’t stick around to see me. Little did I know that he had positioned himself behind me for the best angle to photograph my show.
Another moment in time captured by my father.
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Photo by Warren Brant:
In 1970 I was in my first play at CTC. I’m pictured here as a crippled boy holding a crutch in the play, Jerusalem, about the tragic story of the children’s crusade in the Middle Ages. My father saw an audition notice that read, “Wanted long haired boys” for a play at Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre Co. He asked me if I was interested in trying out. I said yes, and after successfully auditioning my father began driving me across town for countless rehearsals all winter, and performances all spring.
Although legally blind my dad never had trouble passing the eye test when renewing his driver’s license. Looking straight ahead and reading a series of numbers and letters in diminishing sizes, had nothing to do with his inability to see after sunset, or his limited peripheral vision that dramatically decreased as the speed of his moving vehicle increased. We took the freeway. All the rehearsals began before sunset, but regularly ended late into the night. It was an adventure, and I was having a ball. My father was always visible sitting in the theater, patiently waited for my rehearsals to end.
The director John Clark Donahue was an artistic genius that had earned a national reputation. Years later this famous director was arrested for molesting boys exactly the age I was, when my father was patiently waiting in the theater, never leaving my sight.
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Photo by Warren Brant:
My fondest childhood memory is dressing up in costumes. This character was patterned after Gabby Hayes the comic sidekick of Roy Rogers on TV. My mother let me to dress up anytime I wanted, and allowed me to pretend to be my imaginary characters at anywhere. I was walking downtown St Paul with my mother in this costume with a red plastic soap bubble pipe clenched between my teeth. I remember a hobo, or as they say today homeless person coming up to me, and placing a single grain of fresh tobacco in my pipe while my mother held my hand without fear. That night I kept that red plastic soap bubble pipe with that single grain of tobacco by my bed while I slept.
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Photo by Warren Brant:
I thought I’d start my father’s photo series of my childhood at the beginning. Unfortunately, Facebook probably wouldn’t allow me to post the first photo my father took of me in the hospital with the umbilical cord still connected to my mother. I also didn’t want to stir another social media controversy by posting a picture of my mom breastfeeding me, so I chose to go with this naked photo of me instead.
In 1956 when I was born most fathers were not allowed in the room at the time of birth; most women were drugged during childbirth; and most babies were fed by bottle.
My mother has always been ahead of her time. In order to give birth to me naturally she first needed to convince her doctor to allow her to have natural childbirth, then she needed to teach the doctor how to do it. Finally, my father needed to talk the hospital’s 1950s bureaucracy into allowing him and his camera in the room.
The photos are extraordinary.
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My father died twenty-four yeas ago this month while abroad in Japan. Traveling was my dad’s lifelong passion. During the 1940s he hitchhiked to all 48 states of America before his twenty-first birthday. By the end of his life my dad had traveled around the world and visited over one hundred countries.
Here he is posing with a peacock at Warwick Castle in England. Throughout his travels Dad always had his camera slung over his shoulder. I think my father’s love for photography is what drew me toward friendships with so many photographers. I’ve been blessed to know amazing and gifted photographic artists including: Marc Norberg, Layne Kennedy, Mary Ludington, as well as my dear friend David Shippee who lost his life in the line of duty as a photo journalist. (See blog post 8-x-15)
My next series of posts to my blog www.lloydbrant.com will feature a collection of childhood photos taken by my late father, Warren Brant.
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