The frugal nature of Chicago photographer Paul Merideth enables him to see the big picture.
Merideth grew up on a dirt road in working-class Walled Lake, MI (pop. 7,000) northwest of Pontiac. Soon after college Merideth hit another humble route and traveled solo by bus and train from San Francisco to Bolivia. He documented the trip, taking pictures only for himself. He shot landscapes and people over more than a dozen rolls of black and white film.
“It was fulfilling some need I had for myself,” Merideth explained in an April 2024 interview. “It was an opening up process of trying to be more conscious of the world in general.”
Merideth went on to shoot for the New York Times and the Chicago Reader. He is now retired. Merideth is not married and does not have children. “I’ve been asking myself, ‘What do I do with this stuff?,” he said. “How do I keep it accessible? I don’t have a game plan and it is something I’m concerned about. It is a great idea to have someplace to preserve your film and digital files, not just print.”
Paul Merideth was born on Feb. 20, 1954.
His father Paul Merideth, Sr. was an attorney and his mother Olga Marie Larson was an artist. They divorced when he was six years old. “I got a little something from each of them,” he said. Paul Sr. died in 1998 at the age of 78. Larson was a painter and sculptor in Michigan and Albuquerque, NM. She died in 2008 at age 81. Merideth reflected, “She painted in oils and acrylic and worked with clay, alabaster (chiseling forms). She was different than other moms in the neighborhood. To make ends meet she worked as a salesperson in a gallery in Birmingham (MI.) Anytime they had an opening she usually would drag us along. It was a cool environment to be included in. Working in photography was a mix of having a foot in each world. I grew up exploring how things work, from my dad, where the aesthetics came from my mom.”
The Merideth family lived in a single-level wood frame home a couple of blocks from Walled Lake. There was pop music played around the house, but no Iggy Pop from Muskegon-Ann Arbor’s own James Osterberg, Jr. Merideth never went to a concert at the old Pontiac Silverdome, but the Creem magazine headquarters at 187 S. Woodward in Birmingham wasn’t far from his mother’s art gallery.
Merideth received his first camera at age 15 as a birthday gift from his father. It was a Minolta Hi-Matic 7-F with a range finder. The first all metal Hi-Matic was released in 1962. “There was a pretty good piece of glass on it so it made quality images,” Merideth said.
“If my dad treated you to something it was a quality thing.” The next year Merideth traveled to Europe as an eight-week exchange student and took tourist pictures. “Mostly color,” he said. “I don’t remember if it was slide film or negative film. But that’s where I got into picture taking.”
The young lensman still had to finish a year of high school at Walled Lake Western. After graduation, he studied liberal arts at Central Michigan University. “I took a photo course, ceramics and other things,” he said. “I remember developing that first roll of black and white film in the darkroom and seeing images come up was like magic. I knew immediately I was going to explore this further.”
After two years at Central Michigan he transferred to the Center of Creative Studies in Detroit and spent another couple of years working towards a degree. His next move was to apply at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the experimental arts colony in Bloomfield Hills that was
designed by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen (St. Louis Gateway Arch, John F. Kennedy International Airport TWA Hotel and more). Saarinen (1873-1950) entered the 1922 competition to design the Chicago Tribune building. He won second place and immigrated to Chicago.
Merideth was accepted to Cranbrook under the condition that he finish his undergraduate degree and remain for the school’s graduate program. He graduated with a BFA and MFA in 1980. “Cranbrook is a special place with a lot of references, (Swedish sculptor) Carl
Milles and Sarrinen,” he said. “Great architecture. I spent three years at Cranbrook.”
Just after Cranbrook a cousin of Merideth’s returned from Europe. They decided to travel together. Merideth cleared out his closet of his modest belongings. They drove a used Chevrolet Nova to the outskirts of San Francisco with hopes of working in the ski industry. That plan didn’t pan out, but they remained in San Francisco for eight to ten months. Merideth and Cousin Bennie took odd jobs and subleased an apartment in the Mission District.
“I ended up with a girlfriend and Bennie ended up with a woman he was seeing,” he said. “I got a job in a photo lab called Rapid Color. I was a color printer and ultimately got to be the supervisor of the duplicating department. It wasn’t very good money but it was
interesting stuff. We made transparencies and color corrections. Ultimately you have to trust your judgement. It was a fun time to live in San Francisco, 1980-81.”
In October 1981 Merideth was ready to hit the road again. But Bennie left his heart in San Francisco. He stayed and ended up marrying his girlfriend. “And I kept traveling,” Merideth said. “I went to central Bolivia. I had been to Europe and I wanted to go someplace new. The only time I took an airplane (from San Francisco) was in Panama because of the isthmus. There is no road from Panama to Colombia. So you have to take a boat, airplane or hike.”
Merideth taught English for six months in Ecuador. He also spent time in Peru. He traveled with a Leica CL 35 mm camera and a Leica M4-P 34 mm. One night he was robbed at the train station in Palenque (southern) Mexico. “The train never made it and they told me the
train would come tomorrow,” he recalled. “My gringo backpack was on the ground next to me. I dozed off for a minute, looked over and it was gone. Everything I owned.” He replaced the Leicas with an Olympus, a tiny plastic camera that shot 35 mm film. He was satisfied with the camera’s decent lens.
Merideth traveled for 18 months before he burned out. He jumped on a plane back to Miami. “That’s where I could afford the ticket from La Paz Bolivia,” he said. “Once I got to Miami I took a Greyhound bus back to Michigan.” When he returned he made some 5 by 7 prints of his journey but they have not been shown anywhere.
Back in Michigan, Merideth spent a couple of weeks at his mom’s house. He couldn’t find work as a photo technician. So he called a Michigander who found work in Chicago. And Merideth arrived in Chicago in 1982. “He had a sister here and they were kind enough to
let me sleep on their couch,” he said. “Do you remember a group called Mickey and the Memories?”
I sure did. The popular retro singing group was led by the perky Mickey Michaela, an actress-vocalist from suburban Barrington. I wrote about Mickey & the Memories in the mid-1980s for the Chicago Sun-Times. “It was her floor (on Menomonee Street in Old Town) I was sleeping on,” he said. “It was like having an extended family. She was great. I took some pictures of them for their PR. Within six months I found a sublet apartment at 2113 N. Sheffield.”
Merideth started interviewing at Chicago photo labs. “Someone told me that I should first go to Ross-Ehlert (photo lab at 225 W. Illinois) , so I did and they offered me a job as a black and white printer,” he said. “Seven dollars an hour. I didn’t think it was possible to make a living as a photographer. I was working as a technician rather than a shooter. (Owners) David Ross and Ray Ehlert were great and very supportive. I was working in the evenings and getting assignments during the day. They gave me extra room to work. Ross-Ehlert is where I met (photographer) Bob Natkin. He was building the dark room I was about to occupy. I didn’t know Paul (Natkin, Bob’s son).”
Merideth visited the Chicago Defender, Chicago magazine, the Chicago Reader and other publications that could be a home for his photography. “Slowly but surely I moved away from the dark room into shooting for money,” he said. “In six to eight months I started making enough money that I could afford to live.” Merideth branched out to Fortune magazine and the New York Times where his photos graced travel stories on Madrid, Spain and Chicago. “I did that until 2010 when being a freelancer went to shit,” he said. “Instead of getting phone calls to do an assignment I was getting phone calls to give a bid for an assignment. The Reader used to give me two or three assignments a week or every other week and that went away. That was the beginning of the end for ink on paper. I was fortunate to shoot for the Reader. That’s when I realized you could make a living as a photographer. It was stuff I loved to do. They weren’t dry uninteresting stories and they used a lot of pictures.” Merideth guessed there were 12 to 14 photographers in the freelance cycle at the Reader. He augmented his freelance photography by teaching at Columbia College and the now-defunct Ray College of Design in Chicago and shooting for clients such as the University of Chicago.
Merideth’s hallmark work is “Faces of AIDS: The Bonaventure House Project.” Beginning in August 1990 Merideth spent nearly a year chronicling people who were living in the Bonaventure House, an assisted living facility for Chicagoans who were HIV positive.
“Faces of AIDS” was first exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center in April 1992.
“I wasn’t just feeding my desires,” he explained. “I was trying to see if I could get photography to be a bigger thing for me or a way to influence the world, have some kind of impact rather than just pleasing yourself.”
The Bonaventure House was a 30-bed residence built by the Alexian Brothers. Merideth had done some work with the Alexian Brothers. “I met with the director with this idea of documenting life with AIDS,” Merideth said. “He was all for it. It was a matter of me building relationships with the people. Some people were very resistant and when they saw a camera they would run. Others were open to it. Some were deathly ill, some weren’t so much. Later in the process when people saw what I was doing a lot more people became open to the idea. They got used to me. I was doing portraits of people and covering events. They would do a barbecue in the summertime.”
Merideth shot in black and white. He took portraits with his Hasselblad camera. He gave his subjects prints and also made large prints that were installed in the stairwell of the Bonaventure House, 825 W. Wellington.
“Black and white is stronger maybe because color can be distracting and not to the point of the image,” he explained. “It’s a personal thing. Some people like bright, brash colors. Other people work in subtle colors. And other people work only in black and white. I got positive feedback at the cultural center and there was support there as well. A lot of people said it affected them and made them think about AIDS and terminal diseases.” Merideth’s deep devotion to his Bonaventure subjects exemplified his lifelong muse; there’s always a
significant story beyond the camera.------Dave Hoekstra
