Saturday, February 21, 1998

For a Carmelite priest, photography has been a lifelong mission

By JIM JONES / Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH, Texas -- He is a gentle priest with a sharp eye for beauty. He likes foggy and rainy days and bare trees in wintertime. He plays Bach and Brahms on his grand piano in a tiny apartment near Texas Christian University.

This is the Rev. George Curtsinger, a Carmelite priest who at age 82 still presides at Holy Communion every day and visits hospital patients.

He collects friends everywhere he goes. He loves music and is a lifelong student of piano. And one of his greatest passions is taking pictures.

"When I see a picture in my mind, I try to take it," he says.

He's been shooting pictures for more than 50 years.

And his photographs -- bare trees seen through mist, birds on a moonlit night, Spanish horses leaping in midair, brilliant splashes of color from yellow flowers -- are displayed in homes in Texas and around the world.

"His work has a very quiet, spiritual, almost Zen-like quality," said Jim McAlister. "That's what attracts so many people who buy his work."

McAlister and his partner, Ron Henson, now have the priest's photographs on display at Henson-McAlister gallery and frame shop at 3308 W. Seventh St. in Fort Worth. They discovered Curtsinger's work through a mutual friend four years ago and have sponsored four showings.

Curtsinger travels to France, Spain, Portugal, Britain, Italy and other countries with his brother, Eugene Curtsinger, 74, an English professor and novelist at the University of Dallas. Eugene drives while George shoots photographs.

The priest loves traveling in France and believes that the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the Chartres Cathedral south of Paris are more beautiful than St. Peter's, the massive domed basilica in the Vatican.

"Chartres is the most marvelous church I've ever seen," Curtsinger says.

Curtsinger, who was chaplain of St. Joseph Hospital in Fort Worth for 30 years before it closed, is a Texas native who never gives much thought to retirement.

He now is chaplain of the College of St. Thomas More, a four-year liberal arts institution with about 100 students near TCU. The college recently was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Each day, he celebrates Mass in the front room of a house used as a chapel for the college. He also counsels students and others who are going through tough times.

Curtsinger credits the late John Howard Griffin, the author and human rights activist best known for his book ÔBlack Like Me,' for getting him started in photography. "John Howard loaned me a camera and taught me how to use it," says Curtsinger.

He and Griffin met at the Carmelite monastery on Chalk Hill in west Dallas in the early 1950s, when Griffin was spending time there in quiet meditation. The two shared an interest in music, religion and art that developed into a lifelong friendship.

When Griffin showed him the basics of taking photos with a 35mm camera, it was like opening a new world to the priest. "I took pictures of everything around the monastery -- windows, doors, whatever appealed to me," he says. "John Howard printed them for me and told me, ÔYou can make pictures.'

"I got so excited that I couldn't sleep," Curtsinger says.

Curtsinger's love for people often is expressed in his pictures. "I met this woman in Carmel," he says, referring to a small black and white photograph titled ÔCornelia,' a profile of a woman deep in thought. "She and her husband were writers. They would sit in a room back-to-back with their typewriters."

In another photo, titled ÔMr. Peterson,' the smiling, lined face of an African-American man reflects joy and happiness. "Mr. Peterson was a marvelous man and lived to be 120 years old," Curtsinger says. "He was very well-known in Oak Cliff." Curtsinger took the photo in the 1950s when he was a priest at the old Immaculate Heart of Mary Church and school in west Dallas. Before entering the priesthood, Curtsinger studied music and also taught piano at Southern Methodist University. One of the photographs on display at the gallery is of the late Lili Kraus, an internationally known concert pianist with whom Curtsinger studied when she taught at TCU.

Curtsinger also has a portrait he made years ago of a bearded, smiling Griffin, who died in 1980 at age 60.

Although his photographic talents didn't emerge until his 30s, Curtsinger said he believes they were developing since childhood. When he was a boy, he was frustrated when he periodically took pictures with a simple box camera and had the photographs commercially printed.

"I would take pictures of things I thought would look absolutely marvelous," he recalls. "But the pictures would come back from the drugstore looking like nothing."

From Griffin and others he learned that much of the artistry in photography happens in the darkroom. "You don't just make a print," he says. "If it should happen the first time, it would be most unusual. You print and print and print again. And you may get it. And you may not get it."

Curtsinger remains close friends with Griffin's widow, Elizabeth Griffin Bonazzi, and her husband, Robert Bonazzi. The Bonazzis, who have a publishing firm called Latitudes, featured Curtsinger's photographs in a 1989 book of poetry, ÔThe Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross,' edited by the Rev. Pascal Pierini.

Elizabeth Griffin Bonazzi believes Curtsinger almost has a sixth sense in knowing when people are hurting.

"Without Father George, I don't know what I would have done when John Howard was sick," she says. "He was there almost every day to celebrate communion and often brought us hot soup and homemade bread."

His photographic excellence, she adds, comes from his innate artistic sense and a "spiritual center" to his work. "He is a very talented and thoughtful human being; a wonderful combination."

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Distributed by The Associated Press