06.11.08
We’ll miss you, Ike
This is a sad post, but also one that is a joyful acknowledgment of someone who’s been very important to me. Ike Royer passed away last week.
I first met Ike in 1997 or so at Photo Plus, a big trade show I attend every year in New York. He was at the Cachet Photo booth; Cachet was a photo paper company I think Ike was president of. I had just won first prize in the Golden Light Awards’ humor print competition, so I showed him my photo in the awards catalog (I had to cajole him a little…). He then consented to look at my portfolio, and I guess he was hooked on the Holga images. A while after that, he featured 10 of my images, with his commentary, on the Cachet web site. It was my first big web presence, and led into other things for me.
I saw Ike on and off over the years. Then, after not running into him for a couple of years, I got a call out of the blue (good lesson for keeping the same phone number). He was now working for Freestyle Photo, which had become the national distributor for the Holga. And, they had a group called the Freestyle Advisory Board of Photographic Professionals, which he invited me to join, sort of as their Holga poster child. After talking to Elizabeth Opalenik, an old friend and board member, I accepted. And it’s been a win-win relationship ever since.
I attended a Freestyle-sponsored conference/trade show in Santa Fe in 2004, where I was introduced by Elizabeth to the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops people, and got a workshop scheduled with them. That directly led to the book (Diane Heppner of Focal Press saw my course in their catalog and contacted me). Ike is the one who gave me the phrase “Toying with Creativity,” which I used for that course, and then for the book. Later, I had a solo exhibition at Freestyle’s gallery in LA, gave a standing-room-only talk there, and graced the cover of their catalog. Ike (and Patrick Dellibovi, my other main champion at Freestyle) were at my book release party in New York, during Photo Plus 2006; I was so thrilled that they were there, since the book wouldn’t have happened without them.
I called Ike “my other father.” He’s about the same age as my fabulous dad (may he live another 20 years), and always treated me with support, warmth, and caring. And always gave great big bear hugs.
I am so grateful to Ike for first taking an interest in a bouncy 20-something with an obsession for strange little plastic cameras, and continuing to help me to accomplish so much over the years.
I’ll miss him.
Ike in his office at Freestyle, February 2007, during my exhibition there, taken with a Lensbaby
~Michelle