A Zoom With a Viewpoint

Joe Schwartz believes we can all live in harmony, and he’s been making his point with a camera for nearly 70 years. “Gettin’ Along,” a traveling show organized by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions in Pasadena, displays photos by Schwartz of racially integrated communities and scenes during the ‘30s and ‘40s. It visited the South this summer and heads to Indiana next year. A Brooklyn native who spent some of his boyhood in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood, Schwartz hitched back to L.A. on boxcars during the Depression looking for work, then rode through the Panama Canal by oil tanker to New York, where he studied art, joined the socially progressive Photo League and began a love affair with photography and activism. Schwartz was at Iwo Jima as a Marine combat photographer during World War II and documented Santa Monica’s Synanon addiction treatment community in the 1960s, but his focus never strays far from his mission “to illustrate and circulate the love for humanity.” The Atascadero resident, 91, took a break from making antiwar signs to give us a few snapshots.

You call yourself a “folk photographer.” What does that mean?

Some time ago I got into a discussion with friends about folk singing and folk this and folk that, and I thought to myself, “Why not folk photography?” It used to be, probably still is, that among black people they were always talking about “the folks.” “Folks” being people of their own. All my photography is drawn by “the folks.”

How did your interest in integration, civil rights and racial cooperation develop?

I lived with my family in the Kingsborough housing project in Brooklyn during the war years. The racial makeup was wonderfully mixed--Italians, Jewish, blacks, Puerto Ricans. It was difficult at the beginning, but it didn’t take long for most people to make friends. I was working in the offset printing business, and in my union the guys were always saying pretty nasty things about black people. I was always on the defense, trying to prove to these guys they were all wrong. Photographing where I lived and who I knew was a way of trying to prove my points using a camera.

Why did race relations remain a major theme in your work?

In a way, I’m paying something back. You owe somebody for the good things that have occurred in your life. I got a lot of help from black people. I had certain common experiences being Jewish. Many people don’t look at it like that or didn’t want to look at it like that, but I felt that relationship.

While enlisted in the U.S. military, you documented soldiers on Iwo Jima during World War II and later became an antiwar activist.

I was an antiwar activist to begin with. People don’t realize what war does until you’re in it. Even today. Every time I hear about a kid getting killed or maimed, I shudder. I don’t think all this is necessary.

What do you think of the digital era?

I want to learn how to use digital cameras. I think they’re remarkable. They’re at the point where you can take things at the peak of action. That’s the idea, getting good composition at the peak of action, that’s what Cartier-Bresson was into. “The decisive moment.”

You worked jobs such as offset printing in order to do the photography that interested you, whether it paid or not.

I never expected to make any money off of it. I made a choice. Fame and fortune seem to be the two most important things in a lot of people’s lives. When you were part of the Photo League you didn’t think in those terms. I thought in terms of challenging things, or things that would really mean something. We learned to tell the truth in everything we were doing.

Does this attitude have anything to do with your longevity?

Attitude has everything to do with your thinking. And your thinking is connected to your--isn’t there a song about everything being connected in a person’s body? The neck bone is connected to the hip bone. . . . A lot of people just don’t feel connected.

What are your passions besides photography?

People. Even being 91, an interest in good-looking ladies still comes to the fore!