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| Duane Rieder's Engine House no. 25 |
The
stories written about the downturned economy are numerous, and
seemingly everybody has been adversely affected or knows someone who has
been damaged in some way by the nation’s economic decline in recent
years. As with all stories that involve a test of wills, however, there
are those who find a way to not only survive, but to excel. One such
character in this story, Duane Rieder, has come out of the recession as a
sort of Renaissance man. He owns a winery, a photography business, the
Roberto Clemente Museum (which contains the world’s largest collection
of memorabilia dedicated to the Pittsburgh Pirates legend and Puerto
Rican hero), and hosts parties of all kinds, all within his
multi-purpose studio, Engine House No. 25. Through his 27 years in the
photography business, he has met some of the biggest names in music and
sports, and has documented moments in time for some of the most prominent
companies in the country, including United Airlines, ESPN, UPMC,
Nationwide Insurance, and Mellon Bank. And if history proves to be an
accurate precursor of things to come, his plans don’t stop there.
Sitting at Sherlock’s in Erie last Saturday, eagerly awaiting a
performance by the Pittsburgh rock band, The Clarks, I spied a bottle of
wine sitting on a merchandise table, upon which was printed a picture
of the band, as well as a familiar logo which read “Engine House no.
25”. This singular bottle of wine encapsulated much of what makes Mr.
Rieder tick, a mashed and fermented blend of his passion for winemaking
and his considerable skill as a photographer. “Technically, it’s not my
wine anymore. I took the picture on the bottle and used to make the
wine, itself, but now it belongs to a former partner,” says the
photographer. It would seem an odd leap, from photography to winemaking,
yet he found a natural connection between the ability to make wine to
fulfill a passion while also using the bottles to promote his art
through the pictures on the labels.
But why, exactly has he diversified so much in recent years, from a
successful photography studio to so much more? “The business has
changed...three-hundred and sixty percent,” he says, with a tone that suggests the enormity of the transformation. “I was lucky that I got in at a good time. In
the early 90’s, business was booming. I would expect $5,000 for a
shoot, and a company would pay $10,000. Nowadays, I could expect $5,000
and get $500”. When asked why this is, he tells it like it is: “the
economy isn’t so good, and with the perfection of the digital camera, it
seems everybody thinks they’re a photographer. Within a company, why
come to me when you have people who will take pictures for free?”. But
Mr. Rieder keeps a remarkably positive attitude about the current state
of the advertising photography business. “I gave a tour of my studio to
some photography students earlier today,” he said during our interview
last night. “One of the main things I tried to stress to these kids is
that you have to keep everything in perspective”. While the photography
business may never again see the boom it experienced in the 1990’s, a
time in which he says Pittsburgh was one of the top advertising cities in the
country, one can ever truly predict the future. This lack of
predictability rings especially true for another subject that is
extremely personal to him: Lawrenceville.
The town of Lawrenceville, much like Mr. Rieder’s business, has changed
significantly since the native of St Mary’s, Pennsylvania purchased
Engine House no. 25, an impressively remodeled fire house, whose history
dates all the way back to 1896. Founded in 1814 by William Barclay
Foster, father of American composer Stephen Foster, Lawrenceville has
seen some hard times in the past few decades. Once the home of the
Allegheny Arsenal, a supply and manufacturing center for the Union
during the Civil War, as well as several mills, Lawrenceville found
itself in considerable disrepair after the decline of Pittsburgh’s steel
industry. But, as Dr. Abby Mendelson, a lecturer at Chatham University
wrote in his 1998 book, “Pittsburgh: A Place In Time”, “Rehabilitation
and reuse is the game now, and Lawrenceville has learned to play it
extremely well”.
“I
was the first person to go to Lawrenceville,” explains Rieder about his
role in reshaping the neighborhood, with pride. “They wanted me to come
in and be a sort of role model for what could be. I opened up
officially in 1996, at the beginning of the movement. There were nights
where my lights would be the only ones on in town”. But now, 17 years
later, that has changed. “We do all sorts of things in [the studio].
We’ve held town hall meetings, shown off the building to potential
investors in the area, allowed them to see what could be done, and help
them get grants and funding”. Nowadays, the studio isn’t the only
building in the neighborhood with its lights on at night, but rather,
it has blended in with the sea of lights from the many newly opened restaurants and other
businesses that have joined the movement of which he has been a part
since the beginning.
Mr. Rieder’s story of perseverance and determination does not run parallel
only with that of his adopted neighborhood of Lawrenceville, but also
with a man known to virtually all Pittsburghers, Major League Baseball
hall of famer, Roberto Clemente, whose family has become very close with
Rieder. From the beginning of his career as a Pittsburgh Pirate until
his untimely death in a mission to bring relief to the
earthquake-ravaged Nicaraguan capital, Managua, Clemente was often
reviled by the local media. Portrayed as a weak-willed foreigner with a
poor grasp on the English language, reporters often resorted to quoting
him exactly as he spoke, in order to make him seem less intelligent than
his English-speaking, and frankly, white teammates. Yet, Clemente used
that negative attention to fuel his outstanding skills as a baseball
player, earning four National League batting titles, 12 Gold Glove
awards, 12 appearances as a National League all-star, and was named the
World Series MVP in 1971, before his death in a plane crash in 1972,
making him one of the most decorated athletes in MLB history, and a hero
to many in Latin America.
When asked how it is that Rieder became so close to the Clemente family,
the answer was, as could be expected, photography. “I was asked in 1994
to do a calendar full of pictures of Clemente. I went to his house in
Puerto Rico, and found that a lot of the photos of him had been damaged
by water, from hurricanes and humidity. I retouched the
photos for the family, preserving them, and was named his official
archivist in 1996”. From
that point, he began accumulating photos and memorabilia of the
superstar, though the idea of setting up the museum didn’t come up to the plate
until 2006, when the Pirates hosted the MLB all-star game. Due to the
legend’s prominent role in Pittsburgh baseball history, the Clemente
family was present, and decided to hold a party for the event. The
family asked that Rieder host the party in his studio, and it was
decided that the building would undergo a bit of a makeover,
transforming the ground floor from a studio into a room dedicated to the
Puerto-Rican star. From there, the ball started rolling, and the
Clemente museum was born.
When asked
about the family’s role in the museum, he says that they have allowed him to
use Clemente’s name, something that the MLB has been unwilling to do in
the decades since his death. Clemente’s likeness has been used countless times by the MLB and
the Pittsburgh Pirates, while his family, including his widow, Vera, has struggled to pay the bills, receiving very little in the form of
compensation for Clemente's contribution to the continued success of the
league.
Aside from spreading knowledge and love
for one of baseball’s true legends, Mr. Rieder aims to assist the Clementes
as much as he can. “There are a lot of things in the museum that are on loan from the
family, which I do to help them out. The MLB and the Pirates
take so much from them without giving back. There are lawyers duking
things out right now over who owns the Clemente name,” he says, though he
respectfully does not elaborate on the subject. It is clear, however,
that the issue is one that is important to Rieder, not only as a person
who grew up a fan of Clemente, but perhaps more importantly as a close
friend of the family.
From
photography and winemaking, to curating a museum and helping give new
life to a community that many had once counted out, as well as working his hardest to raise his family, Duane Rieder has
become a central figure in the constantly-evolving stories of many,
whether it is known to some of them or not. Though a large part of his
life is dedicated to capturing images as they were at a singular moment
in time, his emphasis on moving on with the times shows that he realizes life isn’t a
simple freeze-frame shot. “I diversified after the economy declined,
and split my time 4 ways now, between the photography, wine, museum, and
party business,” he tells me toward the end of our interview. “The
photography is still going strong, and I have a few national clients
still, including Dick’s Sporting Goods and UPMC, but there’s more to it
now”. When asked how he does it, his answer is simple. “I’m a hard
worker. We build all of our sets ourselves, and we do all the photo
editing in-house”. Perhaps, though, the answer for why he has been able
to not only survive in the photography business but to flourish might just be one that can only be
obtained by seeing as much as he has in his career: “perspective”.
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| One of his most popular photographs, taken during the 2006 Pittsburgh Steelers Season |
