Just a few days ago brother Malachy McCourt said Frank did not have long.  The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela’s Ashes died today from metastatic melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, according to Susan Moldow of McCourt’s publisher, Scribner.

I met Frank and took this shot of him at a tribute to Benedict Kiely (who had recently died) at Housing Works Bookstore Café in March 2007.   He was 76 and in good spirits.  I was very shy at the time, almost embarrassed, to take photographs of people I respected so much.  My camera was a cheap, 2.3 megapixel Fuji my sister Cheryl bought me for my birthday; it certainly didn’t look serious.  I had no confidence.  When Frank asked me why I was taking the shots, I told him it was for Wikipedia and he brightened.  We talked about the site, and he asked why we didn’t just use PR photographs.  I explained to him that we could only use work whose copyright was Creative Commons.

“David,” he said, “you mean to tell me you give all your photography away?  And don’t make a penny?  My mother might say you were a fool!”   He laughed to show he meant the comment good-natured.

I explained to him that I wasn’t a professional, but that the photography gives me a substantive excuse to go out and do things like meet him.

“Mr. McCourt,” I said, and he quickly corrected me to use Frank as I continued, “my life is far richer for moments like this, with you, than the $10 I would chase to have it published, which would only cheapen the experience.  This camera has given me an interesting life, but only because I’ve shared it.”

Colum McCann, Christy Kelly, Christopher Cahill and Frank McCourt by David Shankbone, March 2007

He looked at me for a moment, and then asked if I was going with the other writers, including Christopher Cahill and Colum McCann, on a bar crawl after the reading to celebrate the Irish poet Kiely (everyone was invited).  I was staying away from drinking at the time and told him my stomach didn’t feel right, so I would miss it.  Then he clasped my shoulder, and said:

“Too bad, it would be interesting to hear more.  Society has become so possessive.  People keep things that have no value unless they are shared.  That’s very respectable that you do what you do.”

Then I took a couple of shots, and he continued to mingle.  It was moments like that which fueled my energy to eventually photograph over 500 of the biggest names found on Wikipedia, and my confidence climbed.  Thank you, Frank.  Later that year I would photograph Malachy McCourt in his Manhattan apartment, where we got into heavy philosophical discussions that have never left me.   The McCourt family had a good impact on me at a time when it mattered, and I am thankful to them.

The portrait of Frank above, like all my photography, is licensed Creative Commons and available for reproduction.  Click on it to download a higher resolution version.

Here is the New York Times obituary.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the prominent queer theorist and writer, has passed away from cancer.  An announcement from the CUNY Graduate Center will be forthcoming, but it is unclear whether she passed away Sunday, April 12, or this morning, April 13.   She was 58, and her birthday would have been on May 2nd.  Sedgwick was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1991.

In 2007 I was asked to photograph Sedgwick by Wikipedia editor Zigzig20s.  When I met Sedgwick at her home in Chelsea, she was extraordinarily kind, soft-spoken and enthusiastic about participating in Wikipedia via my portrait.  She was a gracious host.  I spent an hour talking to her about her life, and she asked a lot about mine.

I took perhaps 30 portait shots of Sedgwick, but the one below I felt best captured her essence.  She was concerned that photographs of her tended to be in the extremes: a deathly serious face, or she was uproariously laughing.  She wanted something to capture several aspects of her spirit, and the smirk grin* you see below I think did it.

(As with all of my photography, this image is licensed Creative Commons and may be reproduced with attribution)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who died of breast cancer in 2009

Words about Sedgwick from around the web:

“She was totally my sophomore year of college academic idol, and I know that gender geeks everywhere will be so sad to hear this news.” – Belowthebelt.

“Condolences to those who knew her and are grieving, and to all of those who have been touched, challenged and expanded by her work.” – Susan Stinson

“Without her, there would be no Queer Studies.” – Helen Boyd

“Significant to me because she was a scholar I kept hearing about when I started to learn about feminism and queer theory…” – Thomas Richardson

“Reading through those genre-bending essays convinced me that there was almost nothing that Sedgwick could not make me see anew.” – Jeffrey Cohen

*Roxie Smith Lindemann at Roxie’s World pointed out my inaccurate use of the word “smirk” to describe the smile in Eve’s photo, and it was a good point, so I changed it to “grin”.

From Wikipedia:

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was an American theorist in the fields of gender studies, queer theory (queer studies), and critical theory. Influenced by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, feminism, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, her work reflects an abiding interest in a wide range of issues and topics, including queer performativity and performance; experimental critical writing; the works of Marcel Proust; non-Lacanian psychoanalysis; artists’ books; Buddhism and pedagogy; the affective theories of Silvan Tomkins and Melanie Klein; and material culture, especially textiles and texture.