Independent/Gerik Parmele

Gary Zierke Jr. is placed in to a police car after allegedly leading law enforcement officers on a lengthy chase through Grand Island and Hall and Merrick counties. Several law enforcement personnel responded to the chase including Grand Island Police Officers, Nebraska State Patrol Troopers and Merrick Counties Sheriffs Deputies.

I’m not having a great day today, woke up on the wrong side of the bed. So I thought I would look in to my archive of someone who was having a bad day. I found this picture of Mr. Zierke. If I remember right this fellow was a wanted criminal and had been successfully fleeing police chases for a couple of weeks. At one time he tried to alter his appearance by burning his hair off with a lighter in the bathroom of a gas station.

I was sitting in the office when I heard a call of a chase starting and the responding officer believing it was Zierke. I remember grabbing my scanner and trying to follow along.

One good thing about Nebraska is it’s flat and roads are laid out about every mile running north and south, and east and west. So it was easy to drive parallel to the chase with out being in the way. I drove along making sure the chase was happening a little ahead and to the north of me while driving along Highway 30 in Merrick County.

After awhile I heard that this fellow had driven his car off in to a bean field. That’s when I knew to bust a move up to the scene.

When I got their they were walking him to a police cruiser. As I was shooting I noticed he didn’t seem to be feeling well. I remember he said he was going to be sick. Then something that I thought was extraordinary happened. A police officer helped him out and held him. I remember seeing a lot of compassion in the officer so I thought it would make a good picture. He was patting his back and had a look of general concern on his face. I thought it said a lot about an officer of the law who just captured a guy that had given so many other cops a lot of trouble.

As I began to shoot a State Patrol officer, who thought I was trying to get a picture of the suspect throwing up (which he never did), stepped in front of my camera and yelled at me, “You sick son-of-a-*****!”

Needless to say I didn’t get the picture I wanted.

NOTE: If you missed my previous post I’m revisiting my work from 10 years ago.

It’s been about 10 years ago that I started blogging. I really can’t remember exactly because I had a couple of false starts and changed things around several times. It’s been a love hate relationship but I just can’t seem to give it up not matter how infrequently I update.

To celebrate, if you want to call it that, I decided to dig though my archive from 2000 and pick out some of my favorite images and blog about them.

So 10 years ago I was three years in to my eight year run at The Grand Island Independent. The Indy is a smallish paper in the middle of Nebraska. We were shooting film back then. I still slept with a scanner on and ran on every spot news assignment I could.

I also did a story on a boxing club that met in old converted service garage. The young man in the picture above happened to wipe his face after his work out right in the middle of some of the best light I had seen at the gym.

I’ve been reading a lot of interviews lately at “Mull it Over” a web based interview project by Jonathan Cherry where he talks with contemporary photographers. One thing I love about it is he always asks the same opening question, “What did you have for breakfast?” It’s always in an interesting answer.

In his latest interview, at the end, he asked photographer Horatio Baltz to answer the question, “What does photography mean to you?” It was a great answer and I just had to share it.

“Photography is either 1 of 2 things – perhaps even both at once: 1) a dank, dark, cold hole at the bottom of the world brimming with self-deprecation, envy, processing costs, and realizations that perhaps all of your efforts are fruitless or 2) me at 3 in the morning sitting in a rickety wooden chair completely naked (with the exception of a stetson fedora) sweating profusely while scanning strips of negatives, listening to local public radio, chain smoking marlboro reds and wondering when to call it a night.”

I’ve really been thinking a lot lately about what photography means to me right now. Some of my answers worry me. So reading this made me laugh because there’s a huge lump of truth mixed in his answer.

Wyoming, 2010

A portrait of my dad for fathers day. I don’t shoot enough photos of my parents, especially of my father. I don’t know why but it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. But I really like this portrait of my dad and I wish I had more of them.