Serendipitous Slendor

Harvey Pekar was the author/illustrator of American Splendor, an underground comic series. Harvey was from Cleveland, and worked as a file clerk at the VA, as the comic made him no real money to speak. In the early 90's Harvey was diagnosed with lymphoma, which led to the graphic novel "Our Cancer Year", in collaboration with his wife, Joyce Brabner. I did photos of Harvey for "The Edition" , an alternative news weekly in Cleveland. The gist of the story was basically how difficult the cancer treatments were, and how life kept throwing him curveballs.

The first photo was to show how he was trapped by the treatments. He really needed the crutches to get around at the time.

Next I put him in a corner for sort of a painted in a corner, no way out feel.

While I was shooting their cat, which was black, crossed Harvey's path, adding an "If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all" feel. Lucky for me, though!

The Edition was a tabloid size paper, and the photo with the cat was run large on the front page, as was the style of the paper. When viewed folded you saw Harvey glaring at you, and when you opened the paper to full length there was the cat, sort of a fold-out surprise.

Tomorrow (July 12, 2012) is the second anniversary of Harvey's death. He was 70.