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July 30, 2005
Graduating to The Apprentice
School, important formative years, that is until I got my Catwoman glasses. And the name; yes the name. I was born Kathleen Anne Klutcharch. The family name was Klutsarets but my father and his brothers, tired of people's inability to spell it, changed their name to Klutcharch; a fact I would have to live down until I changed my name to Caverly in 1973.
I loved those glasses but I was teased unrelentingly. My nicknames included Catwomen and Computer. I wore glasses and or had contact lenses all the way through high school. I don't have any pictures from the years between 1969-1975 because, well, my father threw them away.
When I ran away to be a photographer in 1976, I gave a special box to my father which included my collection of photos taken after I became seriously interested in photography in 1971. When I came back to reclaim them in 1981 I was told that they has been thrown away. I am still not over this loss.
I started my apprenticeship as a photographer in a commerical color lab in Chicago in 1975 and by 1976 I ran away to be a hippie photographer and join a motley band of hangglider pilots. I started to work in studios and soon learned that my specialty was photographing people. I vividly remember my fascination with this belt; a plastic see-through belt with silver sparkled stars.
I also got a tattoo in 1976; a blue crescent moon, yellow star and three red teardrops on my right wrist. As I would find out in 1980, this is my identifiable mark, and except when I have covered it with theatrical make-up you will find it in photos of me over the years.
More photos...
I started my fashion and beauty apprenticeship in Atlanta in 1978 and I learned from some of the best. It was a wild world, however, and I was one of the few women behind the camera.
In order to truly understand what it was like, I decided to come out from behind the camera and I was photographed many times, the whole treatment, make-up artists, hairdressers, designer clothes...
I grew my hair very long and before I cut it in 1980, it got almost to my knees.
But mostly on the set, in the studio every day I looked like this:
I realize by looking at these pictures that things were happening quite fast for me back then. I left school, ran away to be a photographer, lived on a mountain top outside Chattanooga Tennessee and came back to Chicago all within just 4 years. I had graduated high school in 3 years, worked as a keyline and paste-up artist, went back to school and did research in behavioral physiology while studying psychology and became a professional photographer. WOW.
Posted by photocartoonist at July 30, 2005 2:41 PM