Buffalo, New York

I can never find images that articulate Buffalo for me. Library of Congress documents the industrial hey days. Grain mills, Erie Canal, World's Exposition and the Catholics. Lionel Rogosin takes care of the rest. I like his photographs but they do not document my own history. His portraits document something diminishing in Buffalo. Eventually it would all go to hell. His photographs reflect the death of the industrial age for African Americans but my father and his ilk still were hanging on. Suburban ranch housing and the white folk blue collar work force still had a tiny piece of the Buffalo pie. Benefits, pensions and salaries to comfortably support a family. So I found this broad. The fleshy, good humored types who littered my childhood. She was at the picnics, on the beach gossiping with my aunt, attended my parents parties, paid me no mind, laughed loud, drank a lot, ate a lot and more or less lived a lot.

It isn't out of copyright. Its from the Library of Congress. 1943.