ROYAL JELLY (Julie Purpura)
I managed and decorated a Gold's Gym in Ashland, MA, from '86 to '91. Health Clubs are pretty wild environments. Our place was fairly enormous, space-wise, and went on to attract many local bodybuilders, men and women (and quite a few kids, too). The place sort of developed an aura, and became famous, due to the huge variety of people who worked out together, or at least at the same time each day; wide-ranging age groups co-habitating; what somebody did for work, why they were there to begin with. What they needed, and/or expected. I set up an on-site pro-photo studio (a couple of 500 watt bulbs; nothing too extravagant), and eneded up taking thousands of pictures of hundreds of people, all of whom were dead-interesting, each in his or her own distinct way (though some people were a bit more "distinct" than others, I'll grant you). This was heaven. I was managing (romantic term for breaking your back doing pretty much everything, and had a built in little side biz right in the back, and hundreds of patrons coming and going day and night. This was my first real training ground, to see if I could successfully balance my hobby/passion (artography thru Portraiture) with the demands of someone else's corporate-leaning interests. I slept little for a good couple of seasons, trying with all my wits to get the club rolling, and then---twice as hard---keep it rolling. Some of the most successful ideas for promotions and in-house client relations-building came from throwing my photos up on the gym-gallery walls, which, as a credit to them, were pictures of those very members and their families. This club got big, and it was a huge warehouse, re-furbished to look like the Venice Beach-style clubs that flourished in the California '70's, and today. As fate would have it, my 16 x 20, high-gloss and Pearl finish, black and white darkroom-made, hand-pulled prints, mounted and hung tastefully (that means everywhere), were the rage for a while. Most gyms that come by the franchise liscence I found were pressured to display pre-chosen ad imagery. Some devoted a small space to the members, but nothing like what I envisioned. I have tens of thousands of negatives I made during these years, when I worked the gym, and somehow found time and more energy to be the official photojournalist for a big guy name-of Clifford Sawyer, who ran the Northeast chapter of the Amateur Athletic Union. I came to via Joe Pachecko, gym owner way of Boston, near the waterfront I recall. Cliff took me on, after I showed him my private work, at his big tudor in Aubern. I worked for expenses, just to get in with all these golden bodies, and what turned out to be a most fascinating run with a whole kind of underworld fitness-crazed medicine show. A definite experience. I didn't get quite as famous as some of the photographers who worked the scene, but I got some absolutely incredible, and original pictures, hundreds of which feature some of the legends and near-legends of the national and local Worcester/Boston/Cape Cod/North and South, Here & There style bodybuilding "shows" during my run, from about '85 and steadily through to about '93, before I left for the AZ decade. The book I plan to publish, in some form being designed now, could knock the veritable socks off of any of a number of those interested or personally involved in the sport, art, science, custom and physical/mental/spiritual discipline that is Bodybuilding & Fitness, American-style. My documentary may well blow many minds, especially those who ran the circuit with me. I made some amazing friends and professional aquaintences doing those shows, and documenting every bit of the goings on. The pictures only tell three-quarters of the stories. I've collected a whole batch of intensely memorable anecdotes, triggered by each picture itself, about how I lived, and what I felt, while making my art out of those peoples' lives. Endless fun with some profound adventures in The Arts & Commerce. Ups and down galore. This was all pre-digital, by nearly 20 years. Had I had my digital camera then, the possibilities stagger the imagination. Film was damned expensive then. I, and my friends invested many a grand in making all that work and creativity happen, and result in actual works of art. Nowadays, my digital capabilities have lent my artistic expression a variety of dimensions that I didn't envision before, and folkes, I tell you: I LOVE THIS CAMERA!!!! [And by the way, the girl in the above portrait, Julie, I met at the gym, while I worked the front desk. She came to do aerobics all the time. She floored me. That face will be burned into my brain forever. Her family knew me from the health club, and so trusted me to do my work, and treat their daughter with the utmost respect. Beautiful results. Perfect, Elizabethan face. Hair from Wuthering Heights, and a budding high-school soccer athlete, to-boot. I am tickled that I was the one who had the gumption to pursue a studio session with her. I honestly lost track of her, foolishly. She was college-bound then, and had an air of looming success in sports or business, something. I'm so proud I created these images, which I see as genuinely haunting. She had a rare and compelling beauty, here at age seventeen, I believe. Her family I'm sure has the work I gave them. God-bless you, grande lady, wherever you roam. Don't hesitate to e-mail, should you bump into this page by a wild stroke]

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