Joe Buemi by Mike Foldes
I met Joe Buemi more than 30 years ago through mutual friends in Binghamton, a small industrial city in Upstate New York. I remember him being somewhat quiet and humble about his work, which he printed himself in his own darkroom on whatever paper in whatever style he liked, including mounting the prints professionally for optimal presentation. Joe was very detail oriented in everything he did, and it doesn’t take long for someone viewing his work to understand and appreciate his dedication to both the art and craft of photography.
The black and white prints shown here are Salon Miniatures from two of three volumes containing ten prints each in editions of 50, signed and numbered by the photographer. The color image is one of just a few color images I’ve seen of his work, as most were done in black and white.
When I last saw Joe he was in late stages of Alzheimer’s, disoriented and rather wild-looking. I don’t ever recall looking into someone’s eyes and getting the feeling — of fear, actually – that I didn’t know who or what I was looking at – and nor did he. And if we did, we both were prisoners unable to escape that momentary (for me) profound inability to escape or express whatever computations were being processed in our brains.
Fortunately, before his disease had advanced, Joe contributed to a magazine I was publishing at the time. I asked him if he would write up something about his work. He kindly agreed.
Many thanks to Eric and Mary Ross, close friends of Joe, who received a large volume of Joe’s work after he died, and who generously shared those works with my wife Margot and myself.
Mike Foldes
Some Thoughts About My Work
To say my pictures are a personal diary of my sensitive feelings toward everyday life is a near accurate description. I use the camera as a medium of note-taking, just as the poet from day to day transcribes his ideas and impressions.
Through my photographic years I have tried to maintain a simple, honest, and direct approach in recording the truth creatively without using special gimmicks or fancy techniques. I primarily photograph in the traditional style of black and white images using secondhand cameras and processing my own work. I accept the challenge of combining the mechanical with human thought and feelings, but always keeping mechanical at a minimum. I believe the essential tools of photography are the senses: the eye, mind, heart and reflexes coordinated in a single moment. Since the camera can not interpret or express emotion, the photographer must transcend his personal feelings through the mechanical eye of the camera and beyond to the final print. Sometimes the camera adorned for it’s magnificent features may cause the user to become over involved with the mechanics of picture taking at a precious loss of human concentration.
Faced with problems and anxieties in our everyday society I regret as we grow older we lose some of the wonderment, curiosity, simplicity and imagination we had as a child. At times I try to turn back an imaginary clock in hopes of regaining some of the childlike ways when photographing.
I believe in photography as a medium that offers me the opportunity to be creative and also to enjoy the magic of giving permanence to moments I want to remember. Some of these moments are frozen in Time.
Joseph A. Buemi of Binghamton
Joseph A. Buemi (b. 1923, d. 2007) served in the U.S. Army in WWII and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He was an artist and internationally recognized photographer. His photographs are in many museums and private collections in the United States and Europe. Locally he taught photography, exhibited and judged photo competitions and his photographs and papers are in the collection of the Broome County Historical Society.
