“Life is about Being and Becoming”

I have been a photographer for approximately 45 years, including time and projects as an art student, a fine art photographer, a documentary photographer, and a photojournalist. Many of my best images are created while on the move traveling the US and the world, from Tokyo to Tibet, from Shanghai to Spain, from Austin to Boston.

The coronavirus has limited my ability to travel, visit other countries and do my preferred mode of photographic work. I haven’t traveled internationally since Paris on Valentine’s Day, 2020. That very day saw the first death from COVID-19 in France. As someone in my late 60s with a history of early-stage breast cancer, the pandemic has felt like a life-or-death issue at every turn. I have been forced to choose a more risk-averse approach to life and work, avoiding some of my greatest pleasures and sources of inspiration, such as travel. 

One of my response mechanisms has been to go back to my own existing archive, which has become all the more valuable to me, since it documents so many “decisive moments,” peoples, and places I have photographed over decades. I now have the time to pull out single images from this rich body of work and contemplate the power and meaning of these photos in new ways. This is one of the benefits of being where I am in life: I have a half century of images to mine!

Life is about adaptations and evolution. So too with my medium of photography. Looking back at the arc of my personal history in photography reveals how enmeshed it is in a series of perpetual adaptations brought on by the availability of new tools and new innovative ways of creating art. For me, it begins with shooting b&w negatives, developing and printing them by hand. For a time, I crafted photos in alternative processes like platinum and hand painted with oils. As a photojournalist, I covered the world shooting color slides. Early in this century, I began utilizing digital photography and moved to incorporate the many advances in technology into my process. I am now regularly posting in the Insta-verse. The tools I use to make images change, but never the desire/urge/need to make new images. 

As the pandemic unfolded, I remained committed to making photos. But the photos became more introspective, locally-focused, more abstract, and object-based. I now use my life experiences, some gained from other cultures, such as my encounters with Japanese aesthetics, to flow into my recent and current work—for example, to layer and play with reflections.

Our tumultuous times have turned into an opportunity to explore what’s around me, whether it be at home, on my road, or in local storefronts. The region from Ridgefield to Rowayton can be as visually fascinating for making images as much as the rest of the world, at least for the time needed to wait out the pandemic.

I have had innumerable serendipitous experiences taking pictures on the main streets of our towns. My piece in this show, “Fashion in the Year 2020”—fancifully patterned masks in the window of a Westport bespoke men’s wear store—comes from one such moment. 

J'ai soixante-dix ans. It’s the truth — it just sounds so much more romantic in French.

Gotta keep dreaming. Can’t stop photographing.