I had no idea there was such a job as a university photographer until I met Bruce Harlan ’49, ’80 M.A., at the beginning of my sophomore year at Notre Dame. A friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend arranged a lunch meeting, and 19-year-old me found myself in the rarefied air of the University Club. I had some experience working on the Dome yearbook, and I must have sounded competent enough that Harlan asked if I’d do a minor job for him.
The task was to shoot an employee and family picnic. I remember it well because it was the occasion of a mistake I made only once in my photographic career: I rewound the film backwards.
I can’t remember why, but I do remember realizing it in the moment. I wondered if I should say something, but I thought no one would notice my rookie error.
Harlan noticed.
I got a phone call from him a few days later, and he said the film had odd marks on it that unfortunately made the photos almost completely unusable. The astonishing part of the call was that he asked me, “Did you rewind the film backwards?” I had made a one-in-a-million mistake and Harlan was expert enough not only to recognize a problem with my photos, but to identify exactly what I’d done wrong.
Not surprisingly, my first job did not lead to a second, but I never made that mistake again. And as I gained experience, I appreciated more and more Harlan’s extraordinary mastery of the craft in an era when technology, nowhere near where it is today, rendered the act of simply making a publishable photo a rare skill.
Harlan, who died in December at age 96, made many memorable images across more than four decades of documenting Notre Dame and its people before his retirement in 1993.
Over the years we’d bump into each other on occasion and have a brief and pleasant chat. (I never reminded him of my mistake!) He always looked and carried himself at least 10 years younger than he was, and his encyclopedic knowledge of photography and service to Notre Dame made him a model to emulate.
I would always walk away thinking, “If that’s how I’ll be after 40-plus years in this job, I’m good with that!”
Matt Cashore has been a University photographer since 2007.