They Said I Do

I came across this single photo amongst a basket of  paper ephemera at a local antique store sale a couple of weeks ago. The candid pose of the couple, the cake, and the table spread of a reception at home instantly drew me to it. But of course, it had no identifying information. I looked through the rest of the papers it was with but didn’t find anything to help me out. After picking around the rest of the tent, I finally made my way up to pay for it. Initially, the clerk seemed confused as to why I would want a single torn wedding photo but offered that he knew who the couple was (I was delighted). He mentioned that they had lived in the area and the husband, Rod Rieser, had been a photographer for the Detroit Times (I was even more delighted!).

I later discovered that beyond his work at the Times (a Hearst newspaper that was sold to the rival Detroit News in 1960) he was a freelance photographer who had his work featured in Life magazine. He was also a founding member of the Detroit Press Club. In the early 1990s a retrospective of his work that featured photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon, and Jackie Gleason, among others was exhibited in the lobby of the Fisher Building in Detroit. I’m so pleased to be able to share a photo of a fellow photographer here on my blog dedicated to wedding photography!