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Tom At the Voting Booth 1976

Posted by Tom Nelson on 8-10-10
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My name is Tom Nelson, and I was Tony Ward’s first model during his college days in the mid 70′s. We met initially in 1974, when Tony lived in an apartment complex in Millersville, PA, while he was an undergraduate student at Millersville State College. We became close friends. After Tony graduated from Millersville State, he moved on to graduate school at The Rochester Institute of Techonolgy where he was trained to become a professional photographer at the beginning of the 80′s. At that time we reunited and I became his butler for he and his second wife, who Tony met while he was employed as a corporate photographer for Smithkline Corporation. In the early 1990s, while TW started to raise a family, I doubled as a babysitter and part time cook for the three children, during his many frequent trips abroad.

Tom As The Intellectual

In the spring of 1976, I first posed for TW, at random locations on Millersville property. At that time I was barred from Millersville campus due to violating a ban on prospective dissidents because of my political views at the time. However the fact that voting machine’s for my precinct were installed on campus, I was allowed access to the campus to vote where Tony took his first photo of me exiting the voting booth at the student union center. This was during the Pennsylvania Presidential primary election that pushed then Governor Jimmy Carter over the top for the presidential nomination. Later for his senior show in the Spring of 1977, Tony wrapped me up in a sheet and smuggled me back onto campus to attend his first student art exhibition.

Tom And The New York Times, December 1976

In December of 1976, Tony and I undertook his first major attempt at a costume photographic session, which was a precursor of his later highly acclaimed book entitled Tableaux Vivants. I dressed in black leotards, and with my favorite read the New York Times, Tony shot me at various locations at the Landis Valley Farm Museum in Lancaster, Pa., where I was working as a janitor. The New York Times was not effective as a prop, but the results otherwise were magnificent! The resulting photographs in the Landis Valley Museum’s schoolhouse, carefully preserved by Tony Ward, provides testimony to his great photographic abilities that would emerge in his later works.