Photographic Work
I have been making photographs for 45 years - since being in Art school where I started out drawing and painting and ended up making photographs and sculptures.
I have explored many types of photographic practice over the years including editorial work for magazines and teaching at various colleges. I have gone from an abstract formalist expressionist to a content-driven social commentator to a classic portrait photographer with a twist. In recent years I have moved back to a kind of abstraction via nature studies, meditating on visual metaphors of balance and exquisite peace, and looking at the beauty of details.
Currently, I am revisiting a Portraits project I worked on in the mid to late 90s. Since I have been teaching older adults in art workshops across CT for the past several years I decided to invite them to be part of another exploration of the present and the past by photographing them and pairing them with reprints of their earliest existing photographs. Below is a statement about that work and some examples of it.
I am also amid my ongoing photographic exploration of the Sky, Water, and Trees - searching for moments that ring with special resonance to me. There are examples of that work below, as well as the past and present Portrait project, and my work photographing children in costume.
Portraits
The pairing of the early and the later portraits strive to capture a glimmer of the essential self and the fact of its continuity, through the analogy of the continuity of physical appearance. A continuity of self is a phenomenon that follows in life whether one wants it to or not. You can’t avoid who you were anymore than you can avoid who you are. Some of us try to defy or hide ourselves but n the end we are left with how we began; a particular, eccentric, integral sensibility that is indelibly who we are. A self that defies physical aspect, chronological age, time and circumstance. A photographic portrait of a child (even a rephotograph of the that portrait) acts as a map or window to that essential self, a self less consciously guarded and disguised than in later years. Some may say that you can not read much into a photographic portrait beyond superficial qualities of skin, hair, light and bone structure. I believe one can feel emotion and soul in a photograph by appreciating and enjoying each minute physical fact of a face, knowing that the life of the subject and the passage of time (or lack of) has helped to sculpt that face.
Sky and Water and Trees
I have always found gazing at the water and the sky an immense comfort and inspiration. I look upon them with relief and joy. The intricate miracles of light reflecting and refracting on the surface of water and on droplets in the air, forming clouds are perfectly serene and heartbreakingly gorgeous. In these very complicated and difficult times that we live in, I find I need the solace of sky and water almost desperately.
The Landscape has always fascinated me as a source of wonder and meditation on the Earth’s natural beauty. I have always had a love of sculpture whether it be natural or man-made. I find trees particularly to have an eternal mystery, strength and the most exquisite three-dimensionality.
I look for the Zen calm and happiness of light, sky, water and trees. These photographs are a reflection of a life-long contemplation of natural forms.
Fantastic Dreams, Secret Identities
The portraits of children in costume; “Fantastic Dreams; Secret Identities” essential theme is similar to my previous work; “Portraits”; that an integral, essential self is present in childhood and one carries the passions and sensibilities of one’s childhood dreams throughout life. Dressing up in favorite costumes is a serious personal statement of who a child is and wants to be. Children dress up and intensely play out complicated scenarios. They work out profound issues of life, love and morality in their story lines and in some ways are most truly, essentially themselves when costumed in what could be termed their fanciful attire.
