The Republic of Humanity
When you come into our house, you will see a good deal of interesting art and artifacts from all around the world. I inherited my eclectic taste from my Bohemian mother and every piece has a story attached to it. It is all very bespoke except that you will see a series of mid-sized interesting framed photographs on the walls of our guest suite, kitchen, dining room, living room and elsewhere. We have a dozen of these. They have a common theme, they are all about indigenous people and represent colorful reminders of the more exotic parts of the world. They are the photographs of David Taggart, what he called The Eye of Taggart and they were part of a thematic effort he had promoted called the Republic of Humanity. I heard last week that David, a dear friend of ours, had been found dead at age 60 in his apartment.
If you go to David’s website for Republic of Humanity, it opens with the admonition for visitors to “Become a Citizen”. From the About page, David described his theme as follows: “Republic of Humanity is an action-oriented, social and multi-media platform that aims to change our cultural narrative. Through award winning photography, visual storytelling, and short anecdotes, our platform delivers a daily dose of humanity and humility to our followers and the broader community. It is our goal to show that diversity is a strength not a weakness, and that it is our responsibility as global citizens to contribute to a fairer and more just society.” I always loved the handle and loved the theme that David espoused. I especially loved David’s photography. He really did have a special eye for wonderfully human scenes and moments. He was one of those photographers who quietly go through the most delicate and funky parts of the world, parts that hold far more beauty than the superficiality of the mud and debris would otherwise imply. David found particular beauty in the wrinkled or painted faces of the indigenous people and even focused his attention of their hands or feet as symbols of their universal connection to us all. I went to the website this morning and tried to play the imbedded Republic of Humanity video, only to find it silent and jammed as though to say that its author was in the midst of his transition from being part of humanity to part of the history of humanity. Once I got it going I realized how truly profound that thought was since the emphasis is that we are all part of something larger than ourselves and that the wheel of life captures us all.
If you go to the website, which I encourage you to do, you will see a tab called “stories”. There you will see seven stories, The Sacred Falls, Ulururu Rises, Last of the Naga, The Righteous Wrestler of Khusti, Food for the Soul, The Way of the Wayuu, and Too Big to Box. They are, respectively, stories about people photographed in Haiti, the Outback of Australia, Northern India near Nepal, Calcutta, Coral Gables Florida, Northern Colombia on the remote La Guagira Penninsula, and Cuba. I wrote all of those stories in a collaborative effort suggested to me by David for a storytelling website called Maptia. David would send me pictures of a recent trip he had made and I would find a story in the pictures to tell, sometimes a true story, sometimes a fictional story and sometimes a story that blended reality with creative license. Our stories always won the weekly prizes on Maptia, prizes of pride rather than money. I think I am a fair writer, but David was an exceptional photographer and I always believed that it was his pictures which brought forth the best storytelling.
But David had a commercial angle to him as well. As example, he was my agent for my first published book. He got me a paid, retainer deal to write a book about the global pension crisis from Wiley & Sons, the foremost academic publisher. I have written several books since then, but never one that involved an upfront retainer.
My relationship with David was reasonably complex. He married a friend of mine, Beatrice (it was his second marriage and her first). Bea had worked with me and we had travelled around Latin America together 25-30 years ago. I was always very fond of Beatrice and she came to know and spend time with me and Kim on various occasions. She and David lived in Miami (Bea’s family is of Cuban descent and David’s came from Kansas). David’s life had taken him to Chile, where he lived for many years and had two children with his first wife. When I first met him it was through Bea while they lived in Miami and he worked for a Mexican magazine publisher. His business orientation was always fluid with some connection to the visual arts, but it covered publishing, marketing, promotion and generally pulling two ends of a rope together. Kim and I attended David and Bea’s wedding in Coral Gables in one of those small Hispanic churches that are set amongst the dripping Spanish moss. For a guy from Kansas, who had a slight midwestern twang in his voice, David was very global in his style and affinity with a particular bent towards things Latino. While he was fluent in Spanish, much more so than me, I could always understand him particularly well since his Spanish sounded like Kansas Spanish if such a thing exists.
Along the way, I ended up hiring David for his marketing expertise when I was running the New York Wheel development project. His task was to secure naming rights of both a primary and secondary nature. People probably wonder how stadiums and big public spaces get named and there is a small but well established offshoot of the advertising world which focuses on naming rights or sponsorships. David pitched me on his ability to do that for the Wheel and I was impressed. I’m not sure whether I was impressed by his visual arts creativity or just his marketing gumption, but I hired him despite the skepticism of my principals (David was an unusual sort and was what some would characterize as an acquired taste rather than a mainstream businessman…and I mean that as a compliment). For eighteen months, he and I shucked and jived to get a deal done and he did the near impossible in landing a $300 million deal with New York Life, an unimaginably conservative sponsor. We were in exclusive contract with them for 60 days when they asked for an extension before signing the final deal. I will never forget the day I got the call from New York Life telling me they were backing out of the deal. There went our sponsor and there went about $20 million in commissions for David. I was flattened by the news, but David just shrugged and went on after a few twitches. Had that happened there would probably be a 630-foot wheel on New York Harbor right now rather than a $450 million construction site.
Somewhere in there David and Bea split up. That was difficult for me because I had known Bea for a long time and liked her a lot, but I was also working with David and liked him. As these things go, the acrimony of the situation made it best for the two worlds not to meet, so I kept working with David until the failure of the New York Life deal forced him to leave. Along the way I had a relationship with some guys in Dallas trying to build their own version of a wheel. I ended up recommending David to them and he took that over as project manager. Befitting of David’s unconventional perspective, he turned that project into something far more creative than an observation wheel, but alas, it too fell short of completion even though the partners in Dallas liked him so much that they continued to work with him on other projects where his creativity could be helpful.
One of the guys who worked with David and me on the New York Wheel was the Head of Marketing for the project, Travis. Travis is the #1 tourism attraction guy in New York City, bar none. He and David became fast friends and went on to work on a number of projects where Travis’ hustle and David’s eye could be put to common purpose. When I heard of David’s death, the one guy I called was Travis and sure enough, he was the right guy to gather David’s coterie of New York friends to celebrate his life and mourn his loss.
David and I had drifted apart for practical reasons. He would still send me things like his latest Republic of Humanity proposal, which I would help him rewrite and improve. He knew that I was better with words where he was exceptional with visual images. I last saw him six months ago, but David will always be near me in our home since everywhere I look I see the humanity and diverse beauty he captured through his lens. My home will always have a place for the Eye of Taggart. Rest in peace, David, while the rest of us keep pushing for more humanity in the world.