Jack Alterman (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on September 5, 2023)

Jack Alterman (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on September 5, 2023)

2023-09-05

Jack Alterman was born here in Charleston and has had a long career as a professional photographer. Mr. Alterman reflects on his family’s life and their dress shops on King Street, along with all of the changes he’s seen downtown during the last half century or more. A Marine veteran, he discusses how he creates art and the different projects he’s worked on and the people with whom he’s worked. Mr. Alterman has published several photography books and speaks about an upcoming film project.

Hayes, Lisa

Cox, Danielle

MP3

Audio

English

JackAlterman_OralHistory_20230905

1:26:10/118.3MB

00:00,000 Lisa Hayes

Yeah, so don't worry about the rambling. And I tend to maybe--

00:09,580 Jack Alterman

I've been called loquacious once in a while.

00:11,580 Lisa Hayes

Loquacious?

00:12,580 Jack Alterman

Loquacious.

00:13,580 Lisa Hayes

Loquacious. That's a good word. [ Laughter ]

00:16,580 Jack Alterman

I had to look it up first time I heard that. [ Laughter ] But then I turned around, I was telling you that, so I said, "Aha."

00:25,840 Lisa Hayes

So I'm Lisa Hayes, I'm the Special Collections Librarian, and I'm here at the Library Society in the fellows room, and we're talking today with Jack Alterman, who's a photographer here in Charleston, and we're going to learn more about him and about his life and his work. So thank you for doing this.

00:43,960 Jack Alterman

You're welcome.

00:44,960 Lisa Hayes

It's very nice of you.

00:45,960 Jack Alterman

Pleasure.

00:46,960 Lisa Hayes

And like I said, we'll just keep it pretty informal. Oh, I should say the date. It's September 5th, 2023. And yeah, I told you I followed you on Instagram. And I have for quite a while, so I'm familiar with your work. And the thing that stands out to me the most is how soulful your work really is. And have you always taken those kind of such, I don't know, lovely, lovely snapshots or how--

01:19,800 Jack Alterman

I think that soulful is a nice way and a good way to put it. I think that when you become an artist or photographer in your recording, the things that you see and feel, that that is where it comes from in your heart. And it develops over a long period of time. I don't think I've always been consciously soulful of my work. It started off where I was a commercial photographer, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with advertising companies and art directors and creative directors. And I don't know why, but I started off being a little more artsy, doing people that I would see and doing contemplative portraits of people on location. And over the, say, decade or more where I was really commercial, industrial, I learned how to problem solve. And that, I didn't realize it at the time, that's really the key to becoming whatever it is that you want to be. You know, you've got to learn how to use those tools, and you've got to learn how to solve problems with, in my case, light and composition and personalities. And in many cases, you know, architectural detail and the time of day, all of that. So yeah, and so about 20 years ago, I just sort of broke out. I wouldn't call it an epiphany or anything, but I think that I just got tired of doing the commercial work and gradually started on the side doing other things. And the primary thing that was happening at that time let’s say, the year 2000. So we kind of had that tipping point, you know, a century mark right there. And at the same time, so much was happening in Charleston. You know, I'd already moved my studio from Meeting Street, where I had been for a long time in the corner of Meeting and George Street, And I moved it uptown to a warehouse on Upper King Street. And at that point I had a very large space. And within a year or two, everything sort of started transforming in the city. I mean, the bridge was being built, the Ravenel Bridge. You know, I grew up with those two Cooper River bridges, the Grace Bridge. And they were very meaningful to everybody, especially when there was just one.

03:55,600 Lisa Hayes

Yeah.

03:56,080 Jack Alterman

You know, just the terror of driving over that bridge. You grew up with that. And that was the first experience most people had when they came to town. So that was going on right in the shadow of where my studio was on Upper King Street. So I was right under those overpasses. So all that activity was happening. And that's when I really started to say, hey, let me start documenting what's going on here in some way. So that just going to answer that question, have I always been photographing things like you're seeing on Instagram? They're the same but different. Instagram and social media have given us a way of staying out there, letting people know that we're alive. And they were doing-- answering that old question, and what have you been up to? And that to me is why I do it once a week. Just to further answer that, so around 2000, I find myself up there. There's a lot of other changes going on in the world, in technology, in photography. And I had sort of cut myself out of a large piece of the pie here in Charleston when I was doing a lot of different things. And as technology changed, I knew I had to get out in front of it, you know, digital photography. And so all of a sudden, the space I had, I had six, seven, thousand square feet of just warehouse space. Great. And I didn't need it anymore, you know, because the dark room was now the light room. And I needed to have people around me who were teachers of that. And they usually were photographers who were ahead of that curve. You know, so it sort of transformed it and started finding people who could teach me and also other people. So it just reformed a club, if you will, which I recently just found out that George Johnson, who was photographer the last term in the century, started the Charleston Camera Club. And I didn't know that until recently. I just picked up a book about him. I'd seen his pictures. So he did, and he was talking to people like Alfred Hutty, who came down from New York during the '20s. So the Renaissance hadn't even started yet. But the Charleston Camera Club, I thought that was interesting. I didn't know that, but we just called it the Charleston Center for Photography. And that was inside my studio. We met once a month, and we had a presentation by somebody. So as this was going on, I was able to learn how to transition from film to digital. I was using both. And so during that time, you know, like I said, the bridge was being built. I had a good friend who was a painter, her name was Susan Romaine, who's now passed away. Susan was painting some pictures, paintings of buildings. And she would come into the studio and say, "Hey, can you photograph this for me "so I can paint from it and stuff like that?" And I said, "That is such an incredible perspective." And she'd say, "You know, I have this old bucket truck and I used to rent them. These were ways during the commercial times to get up high and photograph property. It could be a big industrial site or it might be something being built downtown. I found an old cable man's van that was a white Ford van, and on the back it had a lift, you know, to get you up to the top of a telephone pole. Perfect height. I thought it might be the third floor.

08:01,400 Lisa Hayes

Yeah.

08:02,680 Jack Alterman

You know? And so I saw her and she was photographing cornices or she was painting them. And I said, I want to do that. She said, you know what? Let's do a book together. And you do photographs and I'll do paintings. We won't even talk to each other for a while. You know, I won't show you my paintings. You won't show me your photographs. And at the end of that day, we'll, you know, which was about a year, we'll see what we have and maybe do a book.

08:32,080 Lisa Hayes

That's wonderful.

08:33,380 Jack Alterman

So that to me really was an epiphany in a way. So because I was able to also collaborate with other artists, John Doyle, for instance, who was a good friend who's now gone, and Harlan Greene. So Harlan, you know, has this inexhaustible knowledge of the history of Charleston. And, you know, by the time we had put this book together, he was writing up the introduction and John was writing up another one for this. There were two different perspectives. I just realized that I had found a way of telling the story of the transition of Charleston. And I just went full force on this thing. So those pictures turned into a book. They were paintings and photographs, so like page by page, her painting, my photograph. But the point of it was that nobody else was looking at this part of the city. And I didn't realize just how important it was. So as a kid, I'm going to go back up a little more. And I grew up here, you know, my dad came home from World War II, I was one of the first baby boomers, and dad was an artist also. He was also active in the Footlight Players. But he and my mother, right after I was born, opened up a shop on King Street, on the 300 block of King Street. So that's between George and Calhoun, it’s Burn’s Lane in the middle there. So they opened up a little ladies shop called Elza's Dress Shop, which is my mother's name, a block south of there on the other side of the street, on the 200 block, two something block, was Rosalie Meyer's dress shop, which is my grandmother's. My grandmother helped my mother set up a little bit. Dad had the creativity and realize that we've got to bring high fashion to Charleston. It's changing. So time goes on. They expanded the store. They opened up another one, a bigger one, right across the street. The building used to be Andelo’s Candy Store. The dad had this eye. He said he was looking, I have to imagine this, but he would look out the little window of the first store and see that old building and appreciate the architecture that he saw and it was crumbling. It was not being taken care of. You go in and you buy the little benne cookies and they sort of invented those and he had a load of chocolate. He'd always bring home things. Time passed and the building went up for sale. He said, "I want to buy the building if I can." He got the money from the bank and long story short he said we're gonna move in we're gonna design brand new store it’s gonna be fantastic the building was in such bad repair they had almost disassemble it and rebuild it and so what he did was he used old Charleston floors that he was able to find you know in salvage he built a fireplace in the middle of the store made out of Charleston brick put the seating area in front of it along with racks of clothes all around and made this very attractive to the men in the family who would come along with their daughters and their wives and spend the time while they shopped in front of the fireplace having cocktails. So and they over here they sold you know perfume like Estee Lauder they brought that down from New York. He would go to New York once a month with or without my mother and watch what women were wearing on the streets there. And he said, "This would be good." And I know, you know, so and so would look so stunning in that. So he took the chance and he'd say, "I want to buy a size 8, 10 and 12, and could you had to buy three?" And I found that out because I used to go up there with him on the buying trips when I got a little older. So I don't know if that's where I started noticing things, but certainly back from the cornices. And so at the same time, you know, I'm going to school, now I'm in high school, junior high school, which is on King Street. And as I said when I was filling out your questionnaire, I said one of the things that forms the template of Charleston to me was King Street, the whole thing. It's definitive, really. the second oldest street in Charleston. Here we are talking at the Library Society on King Street. So when you think about it, you divide it up to lower, middle, and upper. Sort of everything cultural, artistic, and retail, and the entertainment of everything. As a child, not only did my mother and my grandmother have stores on King Street, not only did I go to school on King Street. But every movie you would see would either be at the Gloria Theatre, the Riviera Theatre, or the Garden Theatre. And the only other one was The Lincoln, which at that time was segregated. So at that time everything was segregated. And that's the other thing of course, you're growing up during, you know, Jim Crow, the South, during the 50s. Was a very interesting, fun time, the Leave it to Beaver type of atmosphere, but at the same time there's this other thing. So with all of that going into my head, once I started to see what the cornices represented, what the architecture represented, I figured I could tell a story of what Charleston used to look like. And I also had the other privilege of knowing so many of the people who operated their businesses in those first floors. And I remember even people living in the second floor. There was everything from Reed Brothers up on Spring Street all the way down here to Berlin's. And then as you went further south, you got into the more residential and all of that. But if you notice, and that's the thing, people don't notice, it's like people don't look up at things in Charleston. You know, it's a flat city. What's happening right now is they're building vertically and we're all sort of upset with that. The skyline is being changed. It used to be just church steeples were the tallest thing. You know, and ships were able to navigate because they think there's the steeple at St. Michael or St. Philip's. And so now you know when they built the People's Building on Broad Street that was very controversial. But then once that controversy cooled they said okay it's okay to build and we went higher and more and more locations and of course the Medical University and everything. But people don't ordinarily look up they're looking down where they're walking, they don't want to trip over the uneven sidewalk, whatever the reason, they're just not making eye contact with other people or with where they're walking. And I notice if you did, you saw something very different. You know, the names of the buildings, as Harlan, I think, put it, you know, the vanity of the buildings that people put into it, the architecture. And sure enough, there were the names of the people who owned the building at the top. There was the date it was built. And there was another date. Sometimes the date was ten years before. I never understood that they just did it. And so then, like I said, I had this tool at my disposal which gave me this third floor view of what was so familiar already. And that's where the magic really started because I would get up at sunrise, I'd get up before sunrise and get myself within my head, I said I want to be on the corner of this and that. And I concentrated a lot on King Street but then I went all over the city. And once you have this sort of very intimate knowledge of the layout, you don't have to just look, you go there, you're prepared to do it. And like I said, the tools of my journey, I had solved the problem solving issue. So I said, well, what time of day do I need to be at this corner? And where do I need to park it to get it just so and to wait for the light?

17:35,560 Lisa Hayes

Well, I was gonna ask you about the access because I've seen a lot of your photos are from rooftops or they appear to be of rooftops or from rooftops. And I thought maybe you'd have to get permission to do that from these places.

17:49,800 Jack Alterman

That's a very good question.

17:50,820 Lisa Hayes

But it's the truck that you have, the third floor, sounds like. Do you still have something like that?

17:55,400 Jack Alterman

I don't. Now I have a drone.

17:57,080 Lisa Hayes

Oh.

17:57,920 Jack Alterman

A drone, I say technology keeps changing. But your eye doesn't. You know, in other words, that's just another way of solving a problem. You can get extraordinary picture, but you still do it at the 30 foot level. You don't fly so far. in other words, is possible to be in a third floor building and see these pictures that I take. You know, the fact that I don't have to go up the steps or knock on a door. But a good interesting part of your statement there was that the permission part. So back in the earlier days of this, and I, like again, I had my studio on upper King on the 600 block, So that's over by the Post and Courier Building behind there. And I did a lot of people. People would come in and I would do executive portraits, a lot. You know, headshots, as you would call them. And so one day, Joe Riley, our mayor, came in, and I had known him for a long time. He said, "Hey, Jack." And he booked a time to get a headshot, official portrait. And he, so we did that, and he's walking out and he sees some prints that I had just done of some of these buildings, the tops of. And he says, "Gee, you know, I haven't never seen that before since I was a little kid. We used to go up on the roof and we'd jump around, you know, just like this." He said, "How did you do that?" I said, "Well, I've got this van and I park it in." And he goes, he starts to say, "Hmm." He said, "You know, okay, that's interesting." And he didn't say much more, and he left. And the next day, a courier comes by with an envelope, with, and I opened it up, and it's an official, you know, City of Charleston logo, you know, and letterhead, and it's from Joe Riley, and he said, "This, you know, to who it may concern, This gives Jack Altman permission to park his bucket truck vehicle on any city street in Charleston, as long as he has a camera. And so I thought, "This is great!" That wasn't word for word. So I folded it up, put it back in the envelope, and put it in the glove compartment of the truck. And I'll tell you a little story about that in a minute. But the, so that just went on and on. Now I really felt like I had license to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I lived right down here on Queen Street. So for me to get in this thing and plan a morning shoot, which would be 90% of what I would do, because at sunrise you have very few cars on the street, you have very few people on the street, therefore it's not dating the picture. If you see people, you've got a fashion style. If you see cars, you can date the car. So I try to avoid that. So at that angle, I was able to then, you know, layer the city from a foreground cornice to a far, you know, removed steeple. And then even a horizon of the harbor and the ship coming through it. So I found these things that were just happening. They were things that were going on. I expanded that to the harbor from a small boat that I had. And I keep it at Toler's Cove. So again, I get there early in the morning. I get out. And I did a project called "Buoys." I called it red, right, returning, but they were pictures of buoys and ships and sailboats, either racing from the yacht club or big container ships coming in and tugboats and all of that and the Navy ships, that was such a big part of the city. So the short of it is that over those years, there I was, the bridge is going up and it's almost completed, it's 2004-ish, and I'm watching these people who are building the bridge. They're parking near my studio up there behind the Post and Courier. And then they're shuttling up to the bridge and back every day. And I'm getting to know a few of them. I said, "I gotta do this." So I just did a project called the Bridge Builders. And I just started catching them on the way. And finally I said, "Look, who's the good foreman of this thing? I just want to ask him permission to use all of you." And he said, "I called Mr. So-and-so and I got a phone number and I told him who I was and what I was doing, and I said, "Is there a way that I can get a request to everybody who works on the bridge?" And he said, "On payday, I guess I could put a little note in there with their paycheck." I said, "Would you please tell them that I'm a photographer here at the foot of the bridge, gave them the address, and I'm doing free portraits of them for an art project on whatever it may be?" And so he said, "Great." And I gave them two dates to do it. And so after work, so I set up my studio and six, seven o'clock, cars, trucks started coming in, people speaking languages internationally. I had people from, that were Russian, they were people, they were French, Spanish, I should say Mexican, wherever speaking Spanish, Irish, and they were coming in, they had been here for years, relocated here to build this bridge. And it gives you the sense of, you know, this community, how things are changing here, how that bridge was going to be so instrumental. So I did, so I did a show. Like I said, I had a large space and I turned it into a studio, to a gallery and invited them all, you know, and they came with their families, I had it catered and all. And they brought their children. And I learned something that was so valuable to me was just how much it meant to people to be looked at. And to be given soul in a heartful way and to actually apply their picture to a wall with the light shining on them. They're important and they're part of something. And I saw on their faces the little kids looking at my dad and the white, that's my husband. Proud. And it was really very very moving for me. So I kept that going on for all these years too. I later did a very, I think, important project on the east side of town that was rapidly changing and you know it was called East Siders Matter and it I went into the all over the east side with a portable studio like a tent and I just popped it up it was literally eight feet high eight feet wide you know a cube and that's how the light you know would filter through from the sunlight and also put them, take a person out of context. So I see a kid walk by and I said, "Hey, you want to be part of my art show?" He said, "Sure." He'd get in there, you know, and he'd get in there, he'd stand and he'd do whatever. And then I would then communicate, I'd get the look, I'd get it more serious. And that went on from six year olds to 96 year olds to little groups, two or three or four. It was amazing. And I moved around and I went out every couple of days and until finally they said, "Hey where's that guy taking the pictures because you don't want to bring so and so." And everybody said, "Is it okay?" I got sort of a verbal model release. And so at the end of all of that I printed them up. One of the things I have is a great big 44 inch wide printer. It's a giant thing. And I printed it out on a waterproof kind of material. Sort of a satin. And I printed it, I think it was 35 of these things. They were 4 feet by 5 feet. In black and white. I put grommets on the corners. And a friend of mine and I and a couple of other kids went out on the fence that goes along Columbus Street. And it's 150 feet long. And we just spaced it and I put these things right at eye level all the way down the block with a sign at the end that said, you know, "East Siders Matter" and sort of cool graphics. And then we did it at night. So the next day, I remember it was a weekend day, it was Saturday or Sunday, And I went over and I parked across the street and I just waited. And the people started walking by and looking and people who were in the pictures, people would say, "Hey, go tell Jimmy!" But people who were in it, they would walk in. And then the cars would be coming. So then the traffic started. And I watched people who would never have looked before stop and literally stop. Some of them actually got out of the car and walked as if it is what it was, a gallery. So that's when I was asked to do this TED talk and I called it "Roll Down Your Windows and Unlock Your Doors" because as I was going up and we drove through that neighborhood, my mom, they said, "Roll up your windows and lock the door." So it was like, that's what you have to do. I just think that's a metaphor for life, you know, to stop being afraid. In fact, that's what brings bad things to light, is being afraid. And look at people. Look at things that you were not looking at before, whether it's the top of the building or somebody's face or a neighborhood that you think is bad for some reason. So that's sort of been my way of looking at Charleston for the past at least 20 years. And I say it was out of a 40 year career because the last 20 was just more of it. And I saw more changes. You know, if you talk more about what happened after the big Hurricane Hugo in '89, but it was a physical change. In fact, it might have been good because it took all these bad rooftops and they repaired them, which I noticed a lot when I was up there. So that book came out way back in 2005. Then I did a second book called My City Charleston, which incorporated all that I did since then. And I found it to be a much more beautiful book and it was more poetic. In fact, I kind of based it on a poem from DuBose Heyward. You know, the starts off, it says, "They tell me she is beautiful, my city, that she is unique and all this and that." But when I read that, "my city," that's the name of the book. But he did talk about the harbor and the light and what made it so beautiful and special. And so as I was photographing I couldn't help but think that way. And I wrote that in the book. It's got the whole poem in the front. a wonderful introduction from Joe Riley who just said some wonderful things about it. He said, "If you've never been to Charleston before, this is how you should see it. This is the best book that I've ever seen on Charleston and the best that there will ever be." Sort of a quote. And then Josephine Humphries also wrote in that. So two people who are so close to the city, and writers themselves, and emotionally involved, soulfully involved. And then, you know, I mean, at that point, it was 2015, and there were several more shows. I was concentrating more on people now. And I started putting that together in a book during COVID. So during that year, I'd moved now from Queen Street to now to Wadmalaw, which is just, I love. And here are the places that were on the outskirts so long ago that I would just love to go out and photograph and go to Dixie Plantation, for instance. That to me is the epitome of living in the Lowcountry. And now I'm living, I have my own Dixie Plantation. And it's like, I just can't believe I'm living here and watching that sunrise every day in this great place. So that book was about, so to me, I thought, I just include things that I wouldn't, that aren't Charleston. And it's got new pictures from the third floor and it's also got people from all over the world.

32:23,080 Lisa Hayes

What's the title of that book?

32:24,200 Jack Alterman

It’s called My Lazy Eye. And the reason I thought of that, I almost didn't and sometimes I wish I hadn't, because it's got to be, of course it actually had a medical, you know, relative there called amblyopia. It's just, I was born with a lazy eye. And still, you know, I see blurry in one and perfect in the other. And it had a profound effect on my life. especially when I picked being a photographer, it's all about that, but you only need one eye. So I called it that and I explained in my introduction how I had been, that had been a problem for me. You know school wise, I wasn't the best at academics and everything like that. And they kept thinking I had a problem. So they would put me back a year. And that end I was ADD like crazy. So my attention span, it was a double whammy. So it turned out that I used it in my favor. But it put me on different paths. After high school, rather than go to college, I enlisted in the military. I ended up in the Marine Corps and spent 1968 thinking that I was going to Vietnam, but they sent me instead to Okinawa where I had more clerical work. I never saw, never shot a gun except in boot camp. But it gave me the first time, it gave me this discipline, this great sense of something I was very, very proud to be a part of. And after that it gave me the GI Bill. So where I could get into the University of South Carolina or to College of Charleston anything in state, this gave me a ticket to go wherever I wanted to because at that time big colleges, some of them were being created because of the GI Bill that started back before me. So I applied to a school in Santa Barbara, California because hey, it’s Santa Barbara, California. And I said I was going to take over classes at Isla Vista which is UCSB. I mean this would have been like wow. So I sent them some pictures I had taken and they accepted me. So that lazy eye, you know, this is the, I have to back up one second. So when I enlisted in you know after high school, I enlisted in the Coast Guard because my best friend and I were going to do this together. And we were harbor people out here. And we loved the Coast Guard, they're right here in Charleston Harbor. And I said, "That's what we should do." So I get in and I go down to the Federal Building and enlist in there and he said, "Okay, great." And they give you a test and physical and they said, "Okay, so we'll call you when it’s time to come." So a couple of weeks later I get a call from this recruiting officer and he said I'm sorry Jack you're physical turned down because of your eyes and I said I told you I had this lazy eye and he said yeah I know but I didn't realize it but the Coast Guard requires that you're the bad you know it has to be correctable to 20 40 or something at least and yours can't be corrected and And he said, "Oh my God, so I guess I'm 4F. I won't have to do anything." And he said, "No, you're 1A. In fact, because of this, the Army has been notified.

36:05,820 Lisa Hayes

Oh.

36:06,820 Jack Alterman

You're gonna get a draft notice." I said, he said, "But let me tell you something. I've got somebody I want you to meet. If you can come back here tomorrow, I'm gonna introduce you to somebody who might be influential in your decision." And so I came, went back, and there in his office, did this marine gunnery sergeant, a bunch of stripes, and he said, "Hey, Jack, I looked at your application and your academic thing and your physical, and you're outstanding, your tests were great. Don't worry about that eye. The Marine Corps will teach you how to use the good eye." And he said, "Really?" And I looked at this guy, and he’s just beautiful, looked at And I said, "Marine," I said, "19, maybe almost 20." And I'm thinking, "You know, I can do anything, and wouldn't that be amazing?" And I just said, "Okay." Didn't ask my mother anything, my father just did it, and freaked them out. And within a month or six weeks I'm at Parris Island. And so sure enough they taught me how to use my good eyes. I went left handed on everything. So anyway, that's just been, that's why I called the book that. And if you look at it, it just sort of meanders through years of travel, but it points out the way I see things. And that's why I called it that. I thought, look, we all have a perspective. We all have a story that we tell, you know, in a certain way. And that's the way I see. I loved it because I found a continuity from a very young person to where I am now. And the difference being that I had, you know, learned how to do, to solve these problems, to get in front of people especially and get them to look at me without being self-conscious and tell them in my own way how to express something, their inner soul, through their face, through their eyes, through their expression. And then I would apply my tool, the light and the composition, to capture them and make them a portrait. And so that book has a lot of that. with artists in their studios like Mary Whyte, who tells her story so brilliantly, to West Fraser, who does the same thing, Jonathan Green, are all in there, and they're all allowing me to do this because of that special something that I have in my eye that gives them the trust in me.

39:07,300 Lisa Hayes

You recognize, they recognize that.

39:09,100 Jack Alterman

They recognize that. That was so special, because I think a perfect stranger sees it too. So then that leads us to today, the posts on Instagram are just basically things to keep me inspired that I love listening and seeing who's out there. And it's just a little note to everybody to say, hey, I'm still here.

39:35,020 Lisa Hayes

Sunday morning especially. It seems like, yeah.

39:37,020 Jack Alterman

And you can make them timely, you know? I mean the hurricane I put the moon up this past week. But then interestingly I did a second one on Labor Day yesterday which was a picture from Susan Romaine who was the woman, the artist that did the cornices with me. Yeah and it was a guy you know taking a break on a construction crew, the hard hat on. So I said take a break.

40:05,360 Lisa Hayes

For Labor Day.

40:06,160 Jack Alterman

Yeah. So there's-- That's sort of my story there, but any other questions?

40:13,400 Lisa Hayes

Oh, well, I mean, I have a million questions really. Well, tell us the name of your parents' store, the one that they built, and is the building still, what is it now?

40:23,320 Jack Alterman

So it was called Elza's, E-L-Z-A, Elza's dress shop. My mom's name was Elza. The other one was my grandmother, Rosalie Myers. Her name was Rosalie Myers, and she had her maiden name. And so she ran that store until about 1996 or '97. And she just, by that time, you know, they were late '80s, almost I think close to '90. And she just really didn't wanna do it anymore. And I'll tell you why, I'll tell you what date it was. It was 1990, I must just guess 1998. Because that was the year that Saks Fifth Avenue opened up on the corner of King and Beaufain. Majestic Square, that was just good. Target there, is there now. When she saw, I remember, my father went to New York every month to watch what women were wearing on the street. This is the beauty of this story in a way that, I'm telling you, I'm looking at the way people walk down the street too. And he did that study too, what makes people tick? So here it is, my mother saw, Saks Fifth Avenue has come to Charleston on King Street. It's time to move on. Because they're bringing a much bigger resource of that, of that fashion with them. She'd done her thing, she knew that was her timing. So she rented the store out to a dress shop, a young, you know, 20-something year old. It started something of their own. And it went on for a while and finally, She passed away, she was 96, and at that time, my studio was right behind the store, it was a building that the family owned, and I was transitioning myself into less of a physical place, you know, that I could just be very mobile. And so when she passed on, my brother and my sister and I inherited that property, and it was sold to what's there now, which was a boutique hotel and a place called Pinch, I think it's called the Pinch, don't know why. And again, moving on because you know what, happening today right across the street from 36 George Street, a very historic old building where my studio was for almost ten years, And it was a parking lot. That parking lot is and was essential to the retail stores on that block. You had M. Dumas and Son. They had my Rosalie Myers, my grandmother and so forth. They all had a little piece of that parking lot. They all owned something about it that allowed them to go on with their business and always say we have customer parking and employee parking. And right now it's being transformed. I mean they're reinventing that block. So it's going to be apartments, hotels, the whole thing. I mean it's at the BAR. So again, you know, you've got now facades of these buildings, which I bet you, because I know some of the owners of this store, Krogan's for instance, who has been long, long time, who hasn't gone anywhere. Dumas has been there a long, long time, hasn't gone anywhere. Those two alone would have just negotiated, I think, with whoever's doing this and say, "Well, fine, you build a parking garage, "but we want X number of parking spaces forever."

44:06,760 Lisa Hayes

Right. (laughs)

44:08,120 Jack Alterman

That's the deal. And probably more. So the, you know, the city has, just having said that, The city has gone from people where it was. Everybody that I knew all those years were from here. We used to have, when I was in my 20s partying on Market Street, we'd have somebody who had a t-shirt that said, "I'm not a tourist, I live here," or something like that. And it was a joke, because the tourist was such a minority. Now, you know, the binheres are in the minority. And the comehirs, as they say, or the comehere, some people pronounce it, are in the majority. And we have given that away. Let's face it. So the cruise ships and all the things that we have experienced have changed the real nature, the real, I'm not going to go so far as how you said the soul, but in a way, you know, there are more people here now who lived in the northeast than who have grandparents from Charleston that are living in the same places that they are working in the same place.

45:29,200 Lisa Hayes

Well you live in Wadmalaw now, was that a goal or did you feel sort of like you?

45:34,200 Jack Alterman

That was just a happening, you know, it just came up. I said, a friend of mine, somebody I knew, who had a store on King Street, an office supply place, and it was Jack Hugely, who was his father with John Hugely, and for many, many years he had a place there. And I saw it on Instagram or Facebook, he said, "Yellow House, for the first time, is for sale. Please contact me if you're interested." He's a real estate agent. I said, "Y'all know that. That sounds cool." And I said, "Jack, it's Jack. Can I come and see this place?" He said, "Absolutely." So that day, if not the next morning, I drove out there with my wife Jenet, who is very much a part of all of the history of the city. Her father, who started the Footlight Players, who rubbed elbows with all those people from the Renaissance period and who changed the city. We went out there and I said oh my god I was driving down an avenue of oaks to a, not a huge house but something that took you right out on the water that just took you away and so that day I said I'm going to buy what I want. So long story short, I bought it four years ago, four and a half years ago. I added on to it. I built this at any other, I made it into a paradise and where I thought oh I could never not be downtown. I kept coming back, we had our house for a good part of that four years, and we weren't coming down here. We ended up really renting the house to Mary Whyte who used it as a studio. I said how perfect is that? I used the little carriage house and when my book came out, the lazy eye, she gave me a signing party there. And it was just like, and at the same time, you know, a neighbor who had the identical house said, "Look, you know, I always told you if you ever want to sell it, my brother is dying to live next door to me." And whatever it is, it is. And that's what happened.

47:50,660 Lisa Hayes

But where is your, you had the studio that you said was on Upper King. When you go by there now, what's there?

47:56,540 Jack Alterman

You know where the daily is?

47:57,820 Lisa Hayes

Yeah.

47:58,660 Jack Alterman

Okay, that whole complex right there. So what that was when I moved up there was Ferguson Fulghum Paint Company. And they, you know, been in Charleston many, many years. So it was practically an industrial site. And they rented to me a double sort of warehouse. And it was just funky, you know, it was way uptown. I used to tell people, "Hey, I moved up to Upper King Street." He said, "Where?" And I said, "Oh, you went way uptown." And I said, "Yeah." And I kind of missed because I moved right on George and Meeting. And so when I said where I was, everybody knew where I was. My name was on the building, like, you know, on the landmark. This turned out to be a very interesting move, but as things progressed, you know I'm renting now. When I had the other one, I co-owned it. So you lose control, leases tend to come due, and they say, "I'm sorry, we're selling." And so the classes we were giving at the time, because of the Center of Photography, that sort of kept its name going on. to this day, one of the teachers that was very prolific in doing this with me, now owns it. So I passed the name on to somebody, they kept it going, but it was more on site. It wasn't location located. So they gave classes and workshops on “Meet Me At” or something. So by the time that it was time to move to Wadmalaw, I realized that I could get into town to do an interview with you in a heartbeat. As long as I have something to do here, it is nothing more than a 30 minute drive down here. And I go home to something that I can't have here.

50:03,260 Lisa Hayes

Right. I know.

50:05,260 Jack Alterman

So you get used to it. You get used to it. I miss it, but you know something? I go out and the only sound I hear are frogs and birds and the sights I see are a dolphin going down my little almost private river and my boat. Everything is there that I used to have in different places. And it's all consolidated. So, I still have all my friends. They live here and there. and I can get there whenever we want to.

50:36,280 Lisa Hayes

Tell us about how you met your wife.

50:38,860 Jack Alterman

So a date, blind date, some mutual friends of ours. I was a big sailor back in through the '80s and '90s and into the 2000s. And I had a boat that I kept, the 35-foot sailboat. And I would sail all the time in breaks out here, but mostly just cruise. I traveled a little bit with it too. So one day a friend of ours, a woman said, "Jack, you've got to meet this woman. She's just back in town. I mean Jenet Robinson. You might know her." I said, "No." "Let's go take her sailing. Let's all just go sailing." So she and her husband at the time and me and then Jenet shows up. So we go sailing and we're in the harbor, it was one of those beautiful days. And you know, back and forth, I’d come back into the dock. And we were just basically sitting there together, talking about everybody we know about, our parents, about how my dad acted in a play with her father, blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking, this is just clicking like crazy. And you know, I, we just, That's just how we met. So we just kept dating and one day I had to say, "Look, let's just make this official." So we had that, so much in common, and we traveled a lot together. We moved from a tiny little house that I really loved, that's the one that I did miss, on Council Street. It was set way back off behind another house, it was sort of very private, but it's small. So by the time we got married we decided to upscale the house. And the place on Queen Street was available. And it was a Charleston single house brick. And I made that a project because it had been damaged in the 1887 earthquake and big ole cracked down it. Finally after about twenty years from there I had it finished. But it was fun. I love projects, whether it's construction or photography. So that's how we met.

52:51,580 Lisa Hayes

And you go, I saw you were active in the KKBE synagogue, or you, have you been?

52:57,980 Jack Alterman

I'm not active, you know, I grew up in it. You did. So the idea of that place is very special. When I went to high school, I went to Rivers High School in upper King. At the time in the 60s, early 60s, most people had not, West Ashley hadn't developed to the extent it did. There was a few communities right just West Ashley. And then there was this exodus from the area like on Grove Street, St. Margaret Street, that whole place, the Hester Playground area. And all these people were opening up these neighborhood like the Crescent, Confederate Circle you know a lot of the folks there were Jewish they were Greek and they were Protestant and there seemed to be this movement so where was I going with that I'm just trying to think. What was a question? Oh active in KKBE? Oh okay. So all during that time, my grandmother was a member of that synagogue, as was her father. So we go back to the mid 1800s, and so it was reform, where all of the friends that I was in school with were sort of not. They were sort of orthodox, were conservative, and they went to someplace else, which I didn't like at all. Their parents were just very, you know, that. And I didn't want to, you know like Catholics would go to Mass, when Jews would go to Sabbath, it's just I don't have that much interest. And so, but ceremonially, the one, the KKBE is the most beautiful place. And if you go there you just, you don't have to listen to anything, you can just look at the stained glass windows and the light coming through and the chandelier and the engraving up there and even the sound system was cool, whereas the rest of them were just echoey, modern, you know, auditoriums. So it became special. And I went there and went to Sunday School there, I was Bar Mitzvahed there. And I did that because it was totally social. There was nothing religious to me about it. I memorized what I had to say and went out and did it. So I still support them and I think that where they are today they are in a better place with the current Rabbi Alexander and it's a, I mean it's the real thing. I don't mean just as far Judaism versus anything else. But you know, people who are clergymen seem to tell you things that are too hard to believe. And there are some people that interpret religion in certain ways that actually give you some space there. That just don't say this is the way it is, this is right and wrong. you know, I'm going to end this by saying something because I was listening to a TED talk recently and this guy said, he said, I heard an interesting story and he said, this teacher was in front of her class, there was an all-girls school and there was a little girl in the back who was notorious for just not paying attention and so the teacher gave an assignment that day to say, sit there, I want you to draw a picture of anything you want because here's a pencil and here's some paper and passed it out and they all started drawing pictures and she looked back there the teacher did and saw a little girl drawing a picture so she walked back and she said okay so what are you drawing a picture of and she said I'm doing a picture of God and the teacher said to her but you don't know what God we don't know what God looks like. And said, she said, "You will in minute." And the moral of the story is that from that early age, you know, teachers tell us what's right and wrong, and until that little girl was so creative that she could figure out what he looked like without knowing, because she had an imagination. The teacher's going to tell it, but we don't know what they look like. And you're going to keep hearing that the whole time you're in school. That's right, that's wrong. You get an A, you get a C. You've got to do it over. So by the time we're finished with school, the creativity's rubbed out. And fortunately for a lot of people who do over, you know, educate, and we'll give that a break when you talk say about doctors. I found that doctors, physicians, MD doctors, tend to love to go back to art. They are artists that found a way to make a living with it in a sense. And as a matter of fact I had a dear friend who has passed on who was a surgeon, brilliant, and he helped me with that when we started teaching classes. And he retired and loved the camera. And he would come and meet with me at my studio and he'd say, "Let's do this, let's do that." And he just wanted to learn and soak it up. And his intellect just rubbed off on me. You know what I mean? Like it made me start thinking deeper and more about the technology, not taking it all for granted. And when you teach somebody you have to sort of re-state what you know and how you learn it. I love that. I love that, because that little story about a little girl, you later in life have to sort of give some relevance to how you are sure about what you're doing. And someone said, "How do you do this?" And you say, "You do it this way." Well, how do you know? Because you figured it out.

59:13,320 Lisa Hayes

Yeah. Well, and were you starting to say, "Tell me if I'm wrong," that Rabbi Alexander, Stephanie Alexander isn’t that her name. She gives space for these kinds of questions and it makes you feel like they're in a good place at that synagogue.

59:28,800 Jack Alterman

I assume so. But you know what, I feel bad. I don't go, I'm assuming that because I know her personally. I've talked to her not so much from the pulpit but from one on one. And I've listened to her talk about people who have passed on or whatever the subject may be that is not being read. Yeah. That she has studied it, but when she vocalizes it, it's coming from her heart. And I find that to be the best way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

01:00:03,280 Lisa Hayes

So talking about creativity, were your parents supportive of your, did you have a camera when you were a little boy or?

01:00:11,000 Jack Alterman

There were cameras around. I didn't necessarily show any interest in it, my dad, loved taking pictures like any dad, but he's, you know, growing up, I don't think I knew what I was going to do. Part of the reason I joined the military was because I thought that was just something, a way of getting out of where, doing something that I wasn't really doing well. That maybe, and I don't know how I made that decision myself. Cause I didn't ask, I said, "Can I go do this?" I was 18 or whatever, I was legal at the time, and I said, "I'm gonna do it." I did. But I was so frustrated, and at the end of my school, I didn't know, everybody was saying, "I'm going to law school, I'm going to medical school, "I'm going to do this." And I had no idea what it was gonna be. I was terrified of what I might not be. And I would probably end up going into the business with my parents, that they probably thought. It wouldn't have been such a bad thing.

01:01:16,880 Lisa Hayes

Sure.

01:01:17,720 Jack Alterman

So that was, you know, maybe what sort of set me on that road.

01:01:27,680 Lisa Hayes

The trips to New York City, you said you went with your dad on some of those. Was that a kind of a, did you get an eye for fashion? And for?

01:01:35,880 Jack Alterman

Well, it was a process. You know, when I went with him, and my mom would come along too. In those days you go to the designer, you know, you go to, you know, Bill Blass or some of their studios where their children, and you sit in a room about like this, and you get a chair like that, you know, a notebook which was order form, and the salesperson would come in all elegant, and in comes the model. And You know, beautiful model comes in, twirls around. And this is number 102. And it's the chiffon, blah, blah, blah. It's available in magenta, cyan, and yellow. And dad would say ok. The mom, as she said to my mother, said, I think Mildred would look beautiful in that, don't you? And she said, yes, I think she's an eight. We'll have that in an eight. And we'll have magenta in a 10. So you have to buy three. And then that would be that. I thought the theatrical part of it I loved. And Dad, also being an actor, loved going to theater in New York. And so I got to go into those. That was never something I wanted to do because it was too many things like rehearsing, doing something over and over, a repetition I couldn't do.

01:02:59,440 Lisa Hayes

Didn't enjoy.

01:03:00,560 Jack Alterman

Photography is a great thing because there's not a lot of repetition. You got a picture in your mind, go ahead and do it. You're even getting better with the technology today because you can make sure you've got it, done one picture, I don't want to do a whole roll. So that was what I picked up along the way. But like I said, the ADHD part of me, which I still have, is something that I was overwhelmed with and by. And the way I control it now is just the fact that I've had it for so long, you just work with it. Whatever it is, I couldn't tell you what that is. But that's who I am and that's why I do, what I do and how I do it. The only way I know how.

01:03:57,040 Lisa Hayes

and do you have any projects now that are upcoming?

01:04:01,680 Jack Alterman

Well, yes. One is really front and center right now. I've been working here about a year and a half with a very close friend of mine that I met when I went to school in Santa Barbara. And his name is Jay Silverman. And he and I went to school at the same time. He's from LA and went back to LA as I did to Charleston and did a similar process. He opened a studio, did a lot of the commercial work, mainly being that he was in Hollywood. He was doing things for big ad agencies who handled celebrities. So on a given day, Clint Eastwood might walk into his studio and he would do a headshot where I would do Joe Riley.

01:04:43,840 Lisa Hayes

Right. (laughing)

01:04:45,960 Jack Alterman

So his lineup of celebrities were just endless. And so he did ads with them and all this kind of thing. And that developed into later in life, did really, really well by buying the property that he worked on. So now he has that kind of, you know, and so he started about eight or nine years ago. He started saying, "I'm just going to make, I want to make a movie." And so now, so he made three movies about, you know, different things. The first one was about his daughter who had a problem when she was born speaking. And so she did it, and there was also a problem with post-traumatic stress. So he made this beautiful movie, and it would just address that. And he did that for himself as a legacy piece. So then he made a couple of other movies for the heck of it. And so about a year and a half ago he asked me, "You want to help me make this movie? It's going to be called 'Camera.'" And I said, "Oh, that's interesting. Oh, this is perfect. This is us." Because, you know, that's how we know each other. And it's about a little boy, a nine year old boy, who was born with the inability to speak. And he goes back to his daughter a little bit. This is more severe. And so he had had an operation where he was born prematurely, he had a tracheotomy, and he can't speak. His mother's husband is killed in Iraq. She moves to a little fishing village to start her life over with this little boy who can't speak named Oscar. And the village is on the coast of California and it's going through a transition of the fishing, fishing's drying up. What are we going to do because we can't make a living soon? And there were offers on the table of a resort hotel and they said, "Oh, it'll mess it all up. We have to stay with fishing so the other one was a cannery and they were fighting back and forth you know, it's tug of war and there was all this going on in the movie with the players and then The little boy is walking around thinking look I can't talk, his father had left him that most important part a camera that was an old-fashioned double lens big time to look down. You know big yeah, you're a little kid big camera. And it was broken, it couldn't take pictures. So he used the viewfinder to sort of frame things up. And he carried with him a sketch pad and he would look at the scenery like the shore, the lighthouse, and he sketched it. And he looked down through the lens and he sketched it. And he had that little notebook and he carried it around and the spring around his neck with the camera. So he was learning how to see and he would be bullied by the typical bully kids and chased and all this. And one day he gets chased into the back door of a little repair shop on Main Street. And he goes into the back door and locks the door and the bully says, "I'll get you next time." And he's going, "Oh." And He hears some voices and in the front of the shop is a man who's talking to his customers and he's the owner of the repair shop. His name is Eric. He's an older man in his 80s and he is played by Beau Bridges. So Beau Bridges is in the movie. He's the big name in it. And he's got a big beard and he's just a great guy. And he says, "Who's that back there?" And he just catches him with his camera. And he said, "What are you doing with that? That's mine." Because he was a photographer, too. And he said, "You can't take things that don't belong to you, you know, give me that." And so Oscar can't defend himself. So he just, he said, "Now go on home and all that." And then he looks at the camera, and looks at the bottom, and sees the little engraving of the word "Tommy," which was Oscar's father's name. And he goes, "Oh, geez." He said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I made a mistake. I have a camera just like it. I thought you took mine. Come back here. This one doesn't even work. Let me fix it for you." So he teaches the little boy how to take pictures. He has a dark room. He goes in the dark room. They have this relationship that's just like father son, mentor, you know, type of relationship. And so Little Oscar then, now armed with a real camera that works, goes out and starts photographing the people on the street. all of them that the bullies, the people, the fishermen, they're fighting to change the town. And he's clicking away and they're all saying, "Stop getting my pictures," and all that. And, but so, so, Eric, you know, Beau Bridges, little to our, we know he's not feeling well. And long story short, he was dying. He dies. And so, he had told one of his friends, one of the fishermen, "Look, I need you to do me a favor." So he had taken all the negatives that Oscar had taken and he was filing them for him. And he printed them up four feet by five feet. This comes from Jay. When I did that show he was in town. And he said, "We're going to make the end of the movie like that." And so at the funeral they're all talking nice about Eric being such a great guy. They all leave the graveyard and they're walking into town as a group, all the actors, like 30 people. They get to the town and all of a sudden there are these pictures of them in the wind. They're up, they're nailed up on the side of the building. And Oscar didn't know about it. So he comes in the car and I picked him up. He and his mom had no idea. She didn't even realize that he had any talent. And they see these pictures up there and just like I described earlier, how when they saw it on the east side, they in the bridge doors, saw their smiles on their faces. They burst into like, "Ahh!" How about that unity between them with instant at the end of the movie and the mother looks at the boy. He looks at it with tears in his eyes, sees the scene of them dancing, which is part of the movie, in the dark room. Oscar and Eric just having this good time. And you end up, I mean I'm gonna cry telling you. And so that's what's happening. And so Sunday, you know, there's a writer's strike going on in Hollywood. So being that he's, this is an independent film, still the people that are in the film are part of the union, including Beau Bridges. And some of the other names aren't as noticeable, but they're professionals all of them. So he slowed things down. So we got to the part where the track, the music, the background music had been composed by somebody in Bulgaria, in Sofia. And so the idea was they would get it and we'd get this music and I kept listening to it and it was too loud, too fast. And he said, well, you know, the guy going to, you know, a lot of Hollywood people go there or have this orchestra there, record the music, because it's much cheaper. Long story short, we decide to go. So Sunday, we're flying to Sofia.

01:12:53,440 Lisa Hayes

Oh wow.

01:12:54,640 Jack Alterman

And so I'll be there Monday. And then Tuesday night we start recording. We go in, and I'm assuming it's just a big stage. And Jay and I will be there sort of conducting. There'll be a real conductor, but we don't have any other. And apply strings versus something else and see what works. And there'll be two days of that, really at night. And during the day, we've got the day to explore this place. And it's like nobody we know has ever been.

01:13:31,800 Lisa Hayes

You've never been there? No, no, no.

01:13:34,720 Jack Alterman

I haven't met anybody who's been there. But it's an ancient place. And with Roman ruins and gorgeous places. So that's the next project. That's it. And I am basically a co-producer. And it's an honorary thing because being an independent film, he's paying for it. I paid my own way to there and we went to Halibach, we were gonna do the film there. We ended up doing it in California. But that, I'll tell you, that is something I just did because I had never done it before. It is such a complicated process. And like I said, being the ADHD that I am, the M-O-V-I-E-S is not my cup of tea. It's just so repetitious. It's so many layers. And so many things can go wrong, not to mention personalities and talents.

01:14:36,880 Lisa Hayes

Yeah.

01:14:37,720 Jack Alterman

And you cannot do it by yourself.

01:14:39,840 Lisa Hayes

Did you take the pictures that were used as the blowups or did your friend do it?

01:14:43,000 Jack Alterman

Some of them. Yeah, the technology is such that a lot of it was taken, the cinematographer was doing stills as we were shooting. So it wasn't like come over let’s pose. A lot of these were semi-candid pictures. like stay still while we were filming. Cause they had to be in character. And so there was a couple of shots in time. I have a cameo in it. I have a little hat on, I got a pipe I'm puffing on and a big bushy beard. And it's a cold place. Even it's a place called Morro Bay, California. If you look at it today, it's probably high of 60. And it's a little Oscar and all we were walking with a red scarf in my hands. I was part of the writing, I was rooming with the writer, who's from Ireland. And I said, "Look, you wrote this in summer because you wanted the little boy to be on school break." But they're all bundled up. This is winter. You've got to change that. So, yeah, okay. So we changed it to, "He's on break."

01:15:55,460 Lisa Hayes

Unspecified break.

01:15:59,460 Jack Alterman

It's Christmas break. So the, like I said, it's a very, very complicated thing. It's a lot of re-shooting, a lot of, you know, color correction. I had no idea. The learning process. And I learned that this is not something I want to do often. So by being a producer and being a, and I had to qualify, I mean I had a questionnaire sent to me by the, you know, the producer's guild of America. He said, "You can't be a producer unless we say you can." So tell me about your involvement. And I had to tell him, I said, "Well I've been to all the locations, I've been to filming, I'm in it, I'm going to help record the music, I am the support mechanism for the director." I tell him, I didn't tell him this, I said I tell him when he wants to hear how wonderful he is and how great this film is going to be because you lose that faith in things so quickly you know when things just don't line up. And you could hear in his voice often, oh man I did terrible. And so I said Jay, great. all you have to do. And that's what I think my job was.

01:17:22,740 Lisa Hayes

I'm sorry. Well, I look forward to that because I wonder if there's a way we could have a movie screening here or something, you know, maybe there would be a program that could come out of that 'cause I, it'd be wonderful to have a program with you at some point.

01:17:38,220 Jack Alterman

Well, you know, the movie will be a, I could probably get a hold of it before it's released. And the independent films are not released like mainstream. The way he's done it the past would be like at Sundance and such and even at the Charleston Film Festival. The way he's going to try to do this is to actually sell the right to it to a Netflix. And because of the strike that's going on, see if that becomes more possible because they're looking for content. So as far as me seeing a finished thing, I could maybe, show it to you, I'll send you a trailer of it.

01:18:19,180 Lisa Hayes

Okay, that'd be great.

01:18:21,580 Jack Alterman

And, but like I said, that's not about me. What it is really about is the lifelong friendship that was based around what we had in common. That was the camera, photography, staying in touch, having that huge thing in common, and watching our lives parallel just in that way. He'd been married three times, he's got all of these things that I don't have. I got married once and I just sort of don't have a kid. But I sort of lived precariously through him in what was going on in his life as he did with me. And the great thing was we were on two different coasts. So it was far enough apart. I think people's friendships maintain better, have a, you know, it's easier to maintain. when you're not next door to them.

01:19:16,120 Lisa Hayes

Yeah, yeah.

01:19:16,960 Jack Alterman

So.

01:19:17,780 Lisa Hayes

Okay. Well goodness, well thank you so much for your time. This really was a lot of fun for me. I could ask you a lot more questions, but I'll let you go. Maybe this could be one of two, or like I said, maybe a program. Getting to know you more in a program would be great.

01:19:32,720 Jack Alterman

Yeah, I think that really, when you start talking to some of the other people, and you might be interesting to see, like Harlan Greene's one to mine all the time because he's written so much about it and lived here all his life. And is a member of that same organization.

01:19:52,300 Lisa Hayes

Mm-hmm.

01:19:53,140 Jack Alterman

You know, not to mention how he has been involved here. So it'd be interesting to see where all these stories sort of connect.

01:20:01,420 Lisa Hayes

Yeah, yeah. We really are trying to capture the story of Charleston. You know, how Charleston was and how it is and people's experiences as it's changed throughout their lifetimes.

01:20:14,560 Jack Alterman

Yeah, and the key word has changed, it's not going to ever change back.

01:20:18,640 Lisa Hayes

No.

01:20:19,480 Jack Alterman

It's like we all have our memories and we're all nostalgic about the old Cooper Bridge versus the new one and so forth and so on. You still will never be able to go walk into the Riviera theater and see a movie unless it's a conference or something.

01:20:35,060 Lisa Hayes

(laughing)

01:20:37,240 Jack Alterman

But institutions like this, It is maintaining itself. You know the Gibbes, the Charleston Library Society, the library itself, and several other places. Some of the churches and those things seem to have the longevity, you know, that is deeply rooted in the history of the city.

01:20:59,520 Lisa Hayes

Yeah. We try to be a constant presence for sure. Actually, I didn't ask, were your -- was your family members here at the library society? And do you remember the library from when you were a little boy?

01:21:11,120 Jack Alterman

You know, as, yes, I do, but I can't draw on any real specific memory. It just always been here. And, you know, in this book, there's a big picture of it. As I saw it one day in the fall when you have all the leaves that fall in what kind of trees, all those yellow.

01:21:30,240 Lisa Hayes

The gingko trees.

01:21:31,520 Jack Alterman

That still happened. So the picture in the book is the spread of the Library Society, of the library, you know, the Charleston Library. And with that happening, with the steps leading up to it, it's, you know, it reminds me of something that, you know, Harlan wrote again that, about the cornices that he wrote in that book long ago, was that they are so much like the books that nobody reads. You know, we're sitting here in this library right now, this little library, and there are books here that very -- No one reads. And if you look at the architecture of the city, what people don't see is that's it. I have pictures in there from behind things that might let you know that Rainbow Row is over there. But the only thing that you'll ever remember is going to be Rainbow Row. You're not going to remember the Coates Row from the backside, the little cupola there with a ladder affixed to it. That the only people who have ever seen that are the people who put the roof on, people who built the building or who maintain it, nobody else sees it. Cause I'm in my third floor, little mobile third floor, which makes it impossible for anybody else to see. That's really, I get a great kick out of that.

01:22:51,200 Lisa Hayes

It's not that we don't notice things, it's that we just can't see them.

01:22:54,620 Jack Alterman

Everyone is not capable of seeing the same thing. My wife and I went together and she'll say, the next day I'll show her a picture. Where did you see that? We were sitting right next to each other. And you know, people see differently. They read a book and they hear a different story. Same thing with a movie. You know, you walk out with a different critique of it.

01:23:21,880 Lisa Hayes

Right.

01:23:23,180 Jack Alterman

You know, that's why there's five star ratings. You see somebody's always going to rate it with a one.

01:23:26,600 Lisa Hayes

Right. (laughing)

01:23:30,140 Jack Alterman

So, yeah, that's really what it's all about. And, you know, artists are just the most important part of Charleston, when you get right down to it. The longevity of artists, which you look back at the old, you know, photographs of George Johnson and you look at the old, at the artwork of Elizabeth Verner and all of them, to this day, when you look at Mary Whyte's work, she's almost blurring history, so that people can see what Charleston used to look like. And you have to experience it. The African American Museum is a physical expression of that, if we don't go see things, you walk in this library, you cannot unless you know where to go. You're never gonna find the book. You know, a museum is a place that, I'm gonna point it out to you. Stand here, look at this long enough and you're gonna get it.

01:24:38,440 Lisa Hayes

Well, there's such a movement now to acknowledge the work that went into physically building Charleston through enslaved people and also just so many unnamed kind of laborers, like you were saying about the bridge builders, sort of recognizing their humanity and their value in the physical place. Do you, I mean, what do you think about those attempts that people make to tell stories that--

01:25:07,100 Jack Alterman

I think they can do it well or not. You know, I think they have to keep trying.

01:25:11,180 Lisa Hayes

Yeah.

01:25:12,020 Jack Alterman

You can't say that's not good enough. I mean, they make it hard enough to do that anyway. But see, as artists, you don't have to have permission to tell a story. And as a bureaucracy, like a museum, you need more than that.

01:25:32,340 Lisa Hayes

The city of Charleston.

01:25:33,340 Jack Alterman

You get out of the city, you gotta have a board of directors, you gotta have funding and constant reinforcement from them. So I think the most important people are the artists because that's what they do. go to a show they're trying something they're like the little girl who's painting the picture of God she doesn't know what it looks like and by the time I love that by the time she's finished you're going to know what he looks like in her eyes.

01:26:03,540 Lisa Hayes

Well thank you again it was really nice to talk with you yeah.

01:26:07,000 Jack Alterman

Yes thank you.