In 2013 while doing research for Hardship Alaska, my upcoming memoir about serving as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, I came across a website featuring hundreds of photographs of Alaska. Of primary interest to me were those from the 1970s capturing life in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, and Point Hope, a small Iñupiaq Arctic village on the northwestern Alaska coast. These two places were where I completed my two years of alternative service in lieu of military duty. The photographs were taken by Stephen Cysewski. These images were important to me because I had lost all my personal photos, with a few exceptions, from not only that time in Alaska but also my entire life, when the Delaware River flooded my Trenton neighborhood in 2006.
Stephen’s photos portray not only the beauty of Alaska but also its bleakness. His images, especially those of Anchorage, are straightforward, unapologetic, and for me, capture the city as I remember it. His work helped bring clarity to my writing and allowed me to reconstruct the memories of the people and places that had impacted my life some fifty years ago.
I reached out to Stephen in an email in 2013 after spending more than an hour viewing his images online. In his reply he told me how he hoped “to create places for memories” through his work and to “feel free to share the photographs, my goal is for the photographs to be seen.”
Now that Hardship Alaska is in the hands of my publisher, Epicenter Press, I’ve been asked to submit ideas for a cover design. I immediately thought of Stephen’s photos and emailed him again to ask if I could share some of his images as reference material with the publisher. The response was not what I had expected when his daughter, Margaret Cysewski Rudolf, answered my email. She told me that her father had passed away last year and that she felt that her dad would be “honored to have you use his images” in influencing the cover design.
I was saddened by the news and accessed his obituary online where I learned that Stephen had worked with Alaska Children’s Services during the early 1970s, the same organization and period of time that I did during my alternative service assignment. In all probability I had met and maybe even worked alongside Stephen while in Alaska. Funny how life works out like that sometimes.
I encourage you all to take a look at Stephen’s photographs at cysewski.com and in a wonderful virtual exhibition at the Anchorage Museum. And check out this short Youtube video in Stephen’s own words…
Photo credit: Point Hope Cemetery by Stephen Cysewski