TAWA at 45
The Exhibition
Michael Mancuso
Holy Smoke
35mm digital print on canvas, 2001; 24″h x 36″w
In 1974, after two years as part-timer, Michael Mancuso (www.michaelmancuso.net) began full-time work as a photojournalist at The Trenton Times, (the same newspaper he used to deliver as a teen on Greenwood Avenue), regularly covering higher profile events as far as New York and Philadelphia, but mostly centered on Trenton, Mercer County, and central New Jersey. In the 1990s, with the widespread adoption of the Web and digital photography, the media landscape quickly changed. The Trenton Times became part of New Jersey Advance Media, and the online presence of nj.com would soon overshadow the printed newspaper. Mancuso retired on February 28, 2023, and the day before that, in another sign of the changing times, the New Jersey Advance Media full-time photo department was eliminated.
“The study and practice of photography is a way of increasing one’s vision, of opening one’s eyes. In addition to handling creative challenges of lighting, composition, and juxtaposition that all artists deal with, my work at a daily newspaper has also afforded me treasured opportunities to see many of my fellow human beings in so many different situations to which most people would rarely, if ever, have access—places that if I weren’t a journalist, I would have no business being. I’ve shared time in a locker room with a hockey team of Disabled American Veterans dealing with PTSD; I’ve been the only male in an all-female gym; I’ve been the only person not of color in a gym filled exclusively with people of color; and I’ve been the oldest by far in some situations and the youngest by far in others. I’ve stood with mourners inside a church at the funeral of a child gunned down in street violence. I’ve been up close and personal with people of the #meetoo and Black Lives Matter movements. I’ve spent time in prison, but only as an observer, including at a youth facility and a women’s prison. I’ve been on ride-alongs with police officers and witnessed a Trenton firefighter drag a person out the back door in the dark shadows behind a burning house and save their life. So many people, in public situations and in some struggling with very private situations, have invited, or at least allowed me into their lives. It has opened my eyes and heart to the human experience. And when I’ve been the only person of one type immersed in a situation involving people of a specific different type, I learned that I’ve just always been one human being in a room full of fellow human beings.”