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.

McCourt giving a reading at Housing Works bookstore in New York City in 2007.

According to his brother Malachy McCourt, celebrated author Frank McCourt is suffering from meningitis and has as little as a couple of weeks or less to live.  He has been admitted to a New York hospital. Earlier this year McCourt was diagnosed with melanoma.

UPDATE 7/19:  Frank McCourt has died.

“He’s not too good at the moment,” said Malachy, an actor, author and politician who ran for Governor of New York in 2006. “He was doing fine, but he got meningitis two weeks ago and it turned the whole thing topsy-turvy.”

The 78-year-old McCourt was 66 when in 1996 he debuted his memoir Angela’s Ashes, which detailed his growing up poor and adolescence in Limerick, Ireland.  McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930, but his family returned to Ireland in 1934.

The photo above, taken with a very cheap camera, is one in a series I did of McCourt for Wikipedia in 2007 at the Housing Works bookstore.  I would later photograph his brother Malachy for Wikipedia at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which was an inspiring and interesting experience.