March 22, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Globe-trotter’s new career almost picture-perfect
by SABINA CLARKE

Matt is a tattoo artist in Manayunk, oddly enough. (Photos by Bruce Kravetz)

After 14 successful years in the retail business, Bruce Kravetz, 67, the owner of one of Manayunk’s more eclectic shops, Pacific Rim, has hung up his cleats in the retail business and opened a photography studio in Manayunk’s artists’ enclave, The Mill. Now instead of kibitzing with his customers, Bruce can be seen on the streets of Manayunk with a camera slung over his shoulder.

After years of traversing the globe hunting for unusual and exotic artifacts, jewelry, handcrafts, tapestries and bric-a-brac for his shop, Bruce has reinvented himself, once again. This time as a professional photographer, “ I wanted to start a new career. I wanted to be a photographer. That was over a year ago. I haven’t looked back.”

His first solo show, My Manayunk …the photos of Bruce Kravetz, is now on display through March 31 at La Colombe Café, 4360 Main St. in Manayunk. His subjects are the people who live and work in Manayunk, including the “street people” who, he says, “give Manayunk its character.” His photos, more like portraits, show an unusual eye and are attracting considerable attention. They are priced reasonably to sell.

Bruce with his globe-trotting cycle, which is like his second skin.

It may be that Kravetz has finally found himself and is doing what he was meant to do. “Photography,” he said, “ has always been a love of mine. I started at a young age with a brownie instamatic camera. Later, there was always something getting in the way, the Army, marriage, trying to make a living at the art gallery, trying to make a living at my shop, Pacific Rim, and never really having the time to get into it. Then all of a sudden, I decided I didn’t want to do retail anymore. I got tired of the continual buying trips for my shop. Traveling became extremely hard. I would have days of jetlag coming and days of jetlag leaving, so that by the time I got to my destination, I was beat. Evenings were lonely with no one to talk to except occasional tourists. And, since I am not good with languages, when I was invited to dinner, it got boring very quickly.”

A native of Rochester, New York, Kravetz attended Ohio State University. He has one son, David, 38. He moved to Philadelphia because he had a few friends here. (His wife, Terri, has a Ph.D. in neuropsychology and works with brain-injured clients. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and did graduate work at Oxford University in England and the University of Notre Dame.)

When not in his studio, Kravetz, can be spotted zipping around Manayunk on his motorcycle sporting a long white ponytail and black leather jacket. The motorcycle, his trademark, could be a metaphor for the adventurous life he’s led.

John Parker is homeless and lives with his best friend in a tent in the woods in Manayunk.

Oddly enough, he was a paratrooper in the U.S. Army who never got beyond the rank of private. “I was being busted all the time, for minor things, like not having my shoes shined.” No surprise, he would not be your idea of a typical Army private. He is more a throwback to the Woodstock generation, flower power, Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac. An era he eagerly embraces. A photo of him from 1975 shows him with a full beard, long shaggy mane and patchwork jeans.

In 1975, with just $2200 in his pocket, Kravetz took a 15-month trip around the world from Belgium to Yugoslavia to Greece to Port Said, “Just to see the world. The perfect trip is having enough money and no time limitations and going wherever the wind takes me, wherever my interests are.”

His globe-trotting has taken him to more than 50 countries including Greece, Australia, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Belgium, Sudan, New Guinea, Borneo, Java, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, Tanzania, Iran, Turkey and Uganda — where he had a gun pointed at his head during the reign of the maniacal dictator Idi Amin.

He was one of the first travelers to visit Ladak, a village in the northernmost part of India, high in the Himalayas. He remembers what he recalls as a two-day “bus ride from hell. The road had just been completed. There was hardly enough room for one vehicle let alone one coming from the opposite direction. It was a white-knuckle experience, but it was well worth it. I loved the place and stayed over six weeks. One day, I happened upon a small school where there were six and seven-year-old boys learning to draw and paint Buddha images.

“I was a bit bored with hanging out, and I asked if I could join them. Their teacher, a monk, readily agreed. There I was, an overgrown traveler, squatting on the floor with young children, doing my daily assignment. There were no desks. I brought candy for my classmates and made them laugh at my crazy shenanigans. I did that for about two weeks. Despite my leg cramps from stooping over my work on the floor, I learned a lot about structuring a Buddha.”

Other adventures included hitchhiking through Kenya, spending time in the bush in Tanzania, staying with a guru in India, sleeping alongside roads with just a backpack of belongings, spending eight hours in a canoe just to get to a village and taking enough trains, boats and planes to last several lifetimes.

Kravetz is philosophical as he looks back on his life; he is a free spirit with few regrets. He does recall a missed investment opportunity. “In 1976, with little fanfare, I left Rochester, New York, and drove to Santa Cruz, California, on my motorcycle. Not long after I arrived, I met a geek who worked over the hill in San Jose. I had $20,000 to invest and was looking for something interesting. He told me about a bunch of guys in an electronics business who were moving out of a large garage into a small factory and needed cash.

“I said, in hippie lingo, ‘Hey, no way, man; you call that interesting?’ I couldn’t care less about that sort of thing. Instead, I purchased a lunch wagon to sell lunch stuff from the truck. I had to get up at 4:30 every morning to get the truck ready. It took me six weeks to figure out I had messed up and hated the business. The company I didn’t invest in was APPLE, as in APPLE computer and Steve Jobs.”

But he says his most stinging regret is that when traveling to all those exotic locales, he didn’t bring a camera. “It’s enough”, he said, “to make a photographer cry.” With a little bit of luck, he may recoup this loss.

My Manayunk…Photos by Bruce Kravetz can be seen at La Colombe, 4360 Main St., 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., 7 days a week through Saturday, March 31. For more information, call 215-483-4580.