Friendship & Trust -- Christmas Day, 2012

Hand in Hand

photograph © Ruth Bernhard All Rights Reserved

Unfrazzle founder Rajiv Mehta met the famous photographer Ruth Bernhard about a decade ago. One of his friends was Ruth's printer for the last 10-15 years of her life. 

Ruth's longtime partner, Col. Price Rice, was one of the original Tuskegee airmen. She was in her 90's and he was in his 80's. Rajiv went with them to a reception at the Ansel Adams Center in San Francisco that had a major exhibition of her work. 

Ruth produced an amazing body of work, and was most noted for her dramatically lighted, black and white nude studies. This photograph, though not one of the ones she's most famous for, is Rajiv's favorite.

She took "Hand in Hand" in 1956 after attending a Sunday service at the Fellowship Church in San Francisco's Tenderloin District on Larkin Street. In her own words: "I noticed a black man and a white child standing together holding hands -- she with an expression of complete trust. They were waiting for her mother to join them for lunch. I was profoundly moved by their friendship."

Ruth Bernhard died on December 26, 2006. She was 101-years-old.