Yesterday, with my precious $4.99, I defied common sense. Like our sage Simon Morgan, I find that frequenting thrift stores can have a calming effect, a restorative one-heck, in my book, a trip to the Salvation Army is as good as liturgy. Used to be I’d leave the local shop with bags full of fifties frocks and silky camisoles. Over time, though, my intemperance meant I never wore these fine things, and so I turned to the knickknacks, curios, and gadgets. Anyway, it’s in this aisle that the most offbeat regulars linger, and that’s a treat in itself.

On this occasion the gem was a Polaroid Sun 600 LMS, an instant camera several years older than I and purchased for mere dollars. The buy was economical enough, so where was my defiance? This past February, Polaroid announced that, after 60 years on the market, their instant film products would be discontinued. Really, then, I was acquiring a clock along with my camera-time was running out! I take it back. Though sentimentality did figure in here (the chunky Sun 600 had stolen my heart), there was no breach of common sense. My logic: it was not despite the discontinuance of the film that I took my camera home that day, but because of it. If I’d not been pining over Polaroid ever since I heard the news, most likely I’d have reminisced for a moment and then passed the gadget by. Now, instead, I was in a hurry to get my hands on the thing, stock up on film, and revel in depleting it in unison with all other lovers of the stuff.

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Likely it is fair that we suspect most photographers carry on long love affairs with their cameras. Bruce Mozert, though, cared only to trick his. And by devious theatricality, great art was served.

With his coal-hauling business in Scranton spoiled by floods, Bruce joined his sis in the big city, where she introduced him to photographer Victor DePalma of LIFE Magazine. Suddenly Bruce’s course was redirected with a pledge to the image, and he took up an apprenticeship with DePalma. When it was discovered that the novice had real talent, he was sent out on assignment, covering beauty pageants, sporting events, even the Hindenburg disaster.

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Zoë Mozert did more than lead her little brother to New York, did more than hem him in the art scene once he was there. Whether by collusion or coincidence, the siblings shared a philosophy and endeavored to arrange for beauty in the world. Both did this by capturing the typical, the quotidian, the run-of-the-mill within various pretty fictions that had unreal but commercial appeal.

The sister studied illustration in Philadelphia before heading to NYC in 1932. There she generated some very impressive success painting bawdy pastel sirens, the likes of which beguiled from book covers, batted lashes at the newsstand, and adorned many a gilded marquee.

Why so impressive? Zoë had managed to gain a foothold in a business driven by sex and dominated by men. Sure, the images were ultra-feminine, but just a handful of lady pin-up artists triumphed to hold contracts. In 1941 Zoë signed an exclusive deal with publishers Brown & Bigelow, cementing her career. She worked often as a calendar artist, but also designed magazine and book covers along with movie posters for such films as True Confession (1937) starring Carole Lombard and The Outlaw (1943) directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell. Her most famed, and perhaps her most significant series, “Victory Girls,” was painted during World War II.

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Grandma fessed up just before she passed away.
Fearing for our infant souls, she had baptized us into what she called “the human religion.” It was done in the kitchen sink and behind our parents’ backs. The hippies, of course, would not have their progeny denominated, but the poor woman was raised Catholic in rural Italy-who could blame her?

I’ve no clue if I’ve been saved-agnostic that I am-but Gran did pass down her legacy of superstition and the world of ritual. Upon her death, I found a most comforting silver medallion, raided from her treasure trove, and soon I learned how it was a relic of and map to her home Island of Salina.

The medallion, now worn always round my neck, bears the image of Santa Maria del Terzito, postured with a blue mantle and hand bell. She is patron saint of Valdichiesa (a village near central Salina) and protectress of the volcanic archipelago. With a series of three chimes, she both warns of and wards off the major volcanic blasts.

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The Slovenian photographer was born in a small town near Venice in 1946 and was a wild young thing immersed in books and devices. Suffering two separate accidents in childhood, Bavcar slowly lost his sight. He stole away from our shared visual world, taking care to collect icons and senses along the way. When the lights did finally go out, the artist’s mind was full. With a team of assistants, Bavcar now makes photographs. “I measure the distance with my hands and the rest is done by my internal desire for images,” he explains in the notes accompanying his online exhibition, The Mirror of Dreams, hosted at ZoneZero. In a way, Bavcar becomes the thinking camera.

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