Capturing a city's pulse in pictures
'A Year in the Life' is labor of love for Brett
By Seetha Narayan, Globe Correspondent | September 2, 2008
To take a photograph can be a passionate journey. If you've never felt that way about your impulse clicks of camera and cellphone, talk to Boston Globe veteran Bill Brett. The Dorchester native chased fires at 16 to capture them on film, and now, at 63, is still sprinting with his camera.
"It's a photographer's marathon," Brett says of "Boston: A Year in the Life," his photojournalism book documenting 372 straight days of city life, starting with the Boston Marathon of April 16, 2007, and ending with the one on April 21, 2008.
In between lie the tales of a city. There are its small joys, like the May 8 image of two delighted children talking to Mrs. Mallard and her eight babies in the Public Garden; its controversies, as in the Sept. 17 picture of a crowd of reporters furiously taking notes as Governor Deval Patrick announced his three-casino proposal; its hidden aspects, such as the two workers switching floor panels between ice hockey and basketball games at T.D. Banknorth Garden; its quiet moments, like the lonely fruitseller dismantling his Beacon Hill stand on a late November night; its celebrations, like the Valentine's Day party where seniors shared their love stories with writers from Grub Street; and its sports, like the emotional April 8 photograph of Bill Buckner tearing up on his return to Fenway while the crowd went wild.
"I took about 30,000 photographs," said Brett, who drove from his home in Hingham to Boston each day in all kinds of weather for the project. "It was a commitment of no days off, no vacation."
In the sweltering heat of August, he crouched in a second-floor room for a few hours to capture the procession of the Madonna statue at the Fisherman's Feast. "I was roasting," he said. "When I got back out on the street, I couldn't move." In winter, he bundled up and walked the streets. "Those were cold days, very cold - some real cold days," he said. He put 40,000 miles on his car, injured his leg, continued with a cast, injured his shoulder, and took his Thanksgiving and Christmas pictures early so he could have dinner with his family.
Brett did get a day off on Oct. 21. "I knew I wanted the regatta on the 20th," he said. But a baseball playoff game the same evening could not be missed. "I was praying for [the Red Sox] to score their win after midnight so I could use it as my picture for the 21st," he said. He got his wish: the winning run crossed the plate at 12:20 a.m., and Brett got time with his family the next day.
Despite the intensity of the work, Brett relishes the stories of his photographs. Some required friends in high places. "I got pretty good access," he said. "It took me 40 years to get this access. I made a lot of friends." Brett relied on his network of contacts all over Boston to tip him off about celebrity sightings, secure entry into otherwise inaccessible places - like City Hall at 7:30 a.m. - and help with unusual angles, which included views from a helicopter, a high window, and a scissor lift.
Why did he embark on this project? Brett, who retired from the Globe staff in 2001 but still freelances for the newspaper and has since published two other Boston-based books of photography, says he is in love with his city.
"Boston's been good to me, and this is my gift to Boston," said Brett, who plans to donate a portion of the book sales to the Mary Casey Forry Foundation in Dorchester and auction off 30 photographs from the book for Camp Harbor View at the launch party Thursday evening at Fan Pier.
"We have so much to give: schools, hospitals, sports. Each day there is a story to be told about this city, and I tried to do it with a photograph. It's a hobby of mine to understand this town. My hobby and my profession, I can put them all together."
