On Father’s Day I’m giving my father credit for inventing selfies

Did Dad, who walked his life with Teddy Roosevelt Clark, a rough-riding name, invent selfies?

Based on the evidence hidden in this photograph, I argue that it was taken on my fourth birthday in 1952.

We lived in a small New York City apartment in a huge complex called Knickerbocker Village. A group of residents created spaces in the serpentine basement at the location. They used it as a dark room for the photo club.

I am allowed to visit once or twice and can recall dry images with the smell of chemicals, dull red lights, strings. It felt magical as the blank photo paper slowly revealed the image. A considerable number of those photos belonged to me, a golden, born child.

My images were dressed like a cowboy and wearing a little baseball cap hugging my mother – all in black and white. Until mom took a small paint set and a small brush and colored her favorite, a popular craft in the early 1950s.

This photo of my dad and me only existed in faded black and white until his talented photographer, step-son Chaz, worked his digital magic. If you ignore certain fashion clues, it looks as if it was taken yesterday.

Chaz explained how he copied the images and used Photoshop to remove the wounds and bent them. Other filters made him color and fine-tune the image and changed it sharply. Ted Clark would have loved to learn new tricks in visual trade.

But let’s go back to 1952 when Eisenhower became president. The slogan for the day was “Ike.” How was Ted Clark able to take this precious photo himself without the profit of his iPhone? And if he does, does it not yet qualify for this photo as a selfie?

There is a rather sharp memory from that time. This includes Daddy’s Speed ​​Graphics Camera, a sturdy tripod, long thin cables, and a plunger designed to release the shutter. That way he sets up a shot, looks down at the viewfinder, poses, hugs the cute boy and presses his thumb – click, click, snap!

My dad was left-handed. If you look closely, you can see that his left arm is extended so that the shutter cable is not stuck in the frame.

A little background: My father was born in New York City in 1916 and died in 2003 at 86. His father was one of the earliest electrical engineers to move his family to Mount Catskill during his depression. Dad joined the Army during World War II and married his mother, Shirley Marino in Fort Benning, Georgia in 1942, and acquired the rank of the highest lieutenant.

After the war he had a respectable 40-year career, including attending US Customs and appearing in a short government film about Presidential Conference, capture of smugglers and training customs officials.

Everyone who saw the film Smuggler realised that Dad was chosen for his cinematic beauty. I’ve heard him many times compared to major men like Robert Preston (The Man of Music) and later in Peter Graves (The Mission: Impossible);

Dad was able to fix almost everything and was reluctant to pay a mechanic to work at home and in the plumber. On one famous occasion, when the usual fixes didn’t work, he invented a way to interfere with the toilet. He descended to the cellar and dragged the leaf blower. He thrusts it into the bowl and fires it.

A few years later, we learned that someone had invented the toilet gun. Toilet guns are hard rubber plungers that fire compressed air into the drain. It works!

Dad was a powerful silent type – Gary Cooper may have played him in a film – often overwhelmed by the theatrical charisma of his Italian wife, Mama. We may not have given him the credibility he deserves.

However, I thought it would not be too late for me to pay back my father, who is in the heavenly vision of art. Despite his love of photography, Dad, to our knowledge, never received photographic credits in professional publications.

Until now. His name – Ted Clark, my son-in-law, Chaz Dykes, has received my favourite photos at least this day.