For Erica Berger and Brother David, a Silver Lining in Old Photos

THE MOMENT WHEN something happens to a parent is a defining one among siblings, and not always in the easiest of ways. But when their mother broke a hip two years ago, Erica Berger, a professional photographer and three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, somehow created a silver lining for herself and younger brother, David, out of the circumstances.

It all began with a case of insomnia, and a box of old photos.

Erica, raised in Miami and a former staff photographer for The Miami Herald and New York Newsday, has lived in New York City for 20 years. But when the call came the day before Thanksgiving about the accident, Erica headed south for a lengthy stay at her mother’s condo.

“One late night, to amuse myself,” she recalls, “I began going through some old Kodachromes in my father’s collection. I began to recognize a visual theme: the classic side-by-side poses most children assume when told to pose for a photograph. Once in awhile, someone would come between us–Goofy, for instance.”

David’s 50th birthday was less than two months away, so Erica had prints made from the slides, which ranged from 40-45 years old.

“I love the textural look of the old photos,” she says, “and I chose not to retouch any of them so they would maintain their original, aged feeling.

“In this digital age, the likelihood of old slides staying in the box is greater than the likelihood of someone digging them out to make albums. My brother was blown away with the gift, and my mother actually asked where these photos came from, since she had not seen them in 40 years or so.”

David and Erica, children of a musician father and an artistic mother who made all their Halloween costumes, are both in the visual arts. David is a painter of photorealistic still lifes.

“His work tends to be dark,” says Erica, “as does my photography. We have talked about doing a project where we both tackle the same subject matter, so that we could put the images side-by-side and see how alike we are in our sense of things.”

“And we laugh about the idea that we chose professions that mimic the experience of our childhood, in that the artist’s life is a bit unstable.”

THE TSP INTERVIEW WITH ERICA

Q. You know you’re a sister when…

A. “You know you’re a sister when you cannot look at a photo of yourself alone as a child and not feel like half of you is missing. And that half is your little brother, David.

“Being a sister isn’t something I consciously think of. I just wouldn’t be me without my brother. I am certain of this.”

Q. What are your best and worst sister experiences?

A. “Oh, one of my best experiences was catering and photographing my brother’s wedding. It was my first realization as an adult woman that I recognized I would do anything for him. In freezing weather, outside, in a very bad outfit with too much red lipstick on.

“The worst, hands-down, was watching our father die. We didn’t connect. It was as if connecting would make it more painful.”

Q. Any cultural or other references that you share?

A. Neither one of us likes skies to be too blue. We don’t know why, and we only discovered it by accident that we each felt this disturbing sensation. We grew up in Miami, Forida, and figure it has something to do with the open quality of the sky. Like it was too big for us to comprehend. The lonely quality of it….

“I cried on Christmas morning a few years ago when he gave me a coffee mug with my name on it from the Ron Jon surf shop. We grew up under open skies–always at the beach. And I wept when he sent me his most spectacular landscape painting he made years ago when he first began to paint, which had survived a terrible fire.”

Q. Can you share anything that you have learned from your sister experience?

A. “I think we recognize, and are a little uncomfortable sometimes with, how close we are. He is only 15 months younger than I am, and my mother said I tried to strangle him when she brought him home for the very first time.”

“One of the strongest images of my brother that is likely to remain with me on a very base level and ties me to him on a conscious level is standing by the window of my mother’s hospital room after a surgery for an aneurism years ago left her in a coma.

“I was waiting by her hospital-room window and watching the parking lot for my brother’s car to arrive. There was the security in knowing he would be with me at some point; that I didn’t have to wade through the possible loss of our mother by myself….

“I don’t have children, and so if I think of my last moments in this lifetime, I believe his will be one of the last faces I visualize because he is likely to be by my side.”

ERICA’S 50th BIRTHDAY GIFT ALBUM FOR DAVID
“There is no question that while David tends to take life ‘one day at a time,’ ” says Erica, “and I tend to the grander, sweeping outlook, we are more alike now than when we were younger in the way we see the world.”

See if you can see those emerging similarities in these vintage photographs. (Erica’s professional portfolio, including portraits for People Magazine of 31 women who became accidental “sisters” for life when they were pregnant while widowed during the events of 9-11, top right, can be viewed at her website.)

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