Chance influenced career, lifelong photographer says

He has taken his education and skills to many places.
UNIONTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- Some people like W. Keith McManus are fortunate to find their career niche at a young age, follow their heart's desire and eventually carve out a rewarding life in their profession of choice.
While still in junior high school, McManus wrote a letter to the National Geographic Society saying he'd like to become a photographer for the magazine. Responding, the editors advised him that he was too young to make an important career choice. However, they did suggest that, if he still was interested in pursuing a career in photography later on, that he further his education by enrolling in the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in upstate New York or the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif.
McManus' interest in photography never wavered.
While attending Uniontown High School, he mentored under the late Jack Gates, a well-known local photographer and worked as a photographer for the school's yearbook. After his graduation in 1963, McManus, now 60, took the advice of the National Geographic Society editors and enrolled at RIT.
"It was the only school I applied to, and I was fortunate enough to be admitted at a time when there were few options out there to study photography," he said. "The school had just initiated its photographic illustration program, which eventually became my focus."
Since graduating from RIT in 1968, McManus has taken his education and skills to many places -- Mexico, Cuba, Canada, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Currently, he lives part time in the City of Brotherly Love and also has a residence in Uniontown, where he house-sits in the summer months.
What worked out
"Last year, when I wanted to return home to Uniontown to photograph Fayette County and the Mon Valley, I connected with Bev Peterson, a Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, English professor who needed someone to watch her house while she traveled," said McManus. "Currently, I'm using her house as a base of operations to photo-document the area."
Although he's not quite sure what he'll eventually do with the amassed photographs of the area, he's inclined to publish them in a book with others he took in the 1960s and '70s. The two sets of images should vividly chronicle what the passage of time has meant to the region.
After his graduation from RIT during the Vietnam era, McManus enlisted in the Navy. After his discharge in 1970, he briefly moved back home to Uniontown, then, in 1971, decided to relocate to the nation's capital to take advantage of the opportunities available there for a freelance photographer.
"I did think about going back to school and getting a master's, but the only reason for doing so would be to teach," he said. "Because I wanted to work in the field as a photographer, not as a teacher, I never went back for an advanced degree."
Appropriately, McManus signs all of his e-mail with a phrase coined by Louis Pasteur: "Chance favors a prepared mind."
"It's a statement that's been a part of my career from the beginning," he said. "Chance has certainly played a role in establishing myself as a photographer and filmmaker."
Over the years, McManus freelanced in New York, Toronto and Washington, D.C., until he landed a teaching job by chance in 1978. While visiting RIT that year as a lecturer, he met a woman working on a promotional film for the institute. While the two were having dinner, they encountered the dean from nearby Genesee Community College in Batavia, N.Y., who dropped in to ask advice of the restaurant owner.
"It seems that the school's photography instructor had just had a heart attack and the dean was looking for a temporary replacement," said McManus. "When I found out about what happened, I interviewed for the job the following day. Instead of staying for only a few months, however, I ended up teaching there for six years."
Other teaching jobs
From 1989 to 1993, the peripatetic photographer secured a teaching position at his old alma mater, and, from 1993 to 1998, signed on as editor of U.S. News and World Report in Washington, where he covered politics on Capitol Hill and the White House via photography, audio and video documentary.
In 1998, McManus moved back to Rochester and RIT until 2003, the year he decided he wanted to get re-involved in film. Without renewing his RIT contract, he relocated to Philadelphia to collaborate with friend, filmmaker and anthropologist Laurence Satzmann.
Since then, McManus edited a Satzmann film shot in Cuba titled "Imagining Cutumba," which documented the work of the Cuban folkloric dance troupe. He also worked on a 2002 film about the troupe's visit to the U.S.
Currently, he's shooting a film with Satzmann in east central Mexico in the state of Pueblo that focuses on the effect of money sent back to the region by immigrant workers in the United States.
"The small and remote villages of Pueblo are populated by agriculture-based indigenous Indians who live in wooden houses," he said. "Money sent back to the area by immigrant labor is affecting everything from the architecture to the area's social fabric."
Some residents are starting to build homes of concrete block instead of wood; one man started a bus line connecting the villages; and another opened a tortilla-making enterprise. Some of the residents also are learning to use the Internet, which is bringing into the region additional influences from outside the country.
Filmmaking is nothing new to McManus. In 1988, he shot a PBS documentary titled "Mending Hearts: Living With AIDS." Narrated by Christopher Reeve, the documentary shows how a cross-section of people -- gay men, black men and straight women -- living in Atlanta, Ga., who were affected by the disease.
"Ironically, the first time I saw the film broadcast was during a visit to Philadelphia when it aired on WHYY," he said. "Somehow I missed the 1991 premiere and serendipitously caught the film when I turned on the TV."
Connections
Eventually, McManus chose to live in Philadelphia largely because Satzmann had built up numerous personal connections that helped them in their film endeavors. The city's vibrant arts community and the fact that New York is just a short train ride away also encouraged him to relocate.
Early in his career, McManus used a Leica film-loaded camera in his work. However, when he went back to teach at RIT for the second time, Nikon gave everyone on the faculty, including himself, a digital camera.
"Actually, the digital camera and I go back to 1989, when I had my first experience with it while teaching a photojournalism class," he said. "However, I never used it much in my work on a regular basis until 2000. Now I use it almost exclusively. In May, for instance, I shot over 2,000 photos in Mexico on digital."
McManus said that he enjoys taking photos because he's interested in people, culture and social issues and that photography is the instrument that's introduced him to a lot of experiences most people don't get to have.
As his career grew with time, he moved away from taking random street shoots in favor of taking a series of photos as part of a longer-term project. For instance, he went to one of the first meetings of the Love Canal Homeowners Association concerned about toxic waste in that area of western New York, which eventually proved to be the nation's first major environmental disaster.
"I had wonderful access to photograph the project," he said. The experience there served as a model for other long-term ventures that came later."
One of his favorite assignments was to photo-document Pope John Paul II's first American visit, when the Catholic Church hired him to capture on film scenes of the papal visit for a book they intended to publish.
"In retrospect, I consider myself very fortunate for being able to experience a great deal of interesting people, places and events as a result of my career," he said.
The photography of W. Keith McManus can be viewed on the Internet at his Web site www.keithmcmanus.com
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