PHOTOGRAPHY
DACHAU
|
In 2019 I took a trip to the Czech Republic and Germany. While there, I visited Dachau Concentration Camp located just outside of Munich. I wasn't planning to take many pictures but while walking down the prison hall I saw a broken light switch and took my first photograph. That led me to continue my tour through the eye of the camera. The result is a photo essay of about twenty images that document much of what I witnessed of the camp including the gas chamber, crematorium, firing range, and prison. April 29, 2020 will mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation by U.S. troops of Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany's Nazi regime.
|
|
BARCELONA GRAFFITI
|
On a trip along the Mediterranean in 2012, I spent four days in Barcelona discovering the beautiful graffiti gracing never the walls themselves but the grates, glass, doors, and street elements between the walls. Here is a small sampling of the some seventy five photographs I took during my stay. Several of them were enlarged on six foot vinyl mesh panels for an exhibit about art and the written word. The photos look really good big.
An obsession is something you can’t stop thinking about. An addiction is something you can’t stop doing.” |
|
THE DEAD COUCH PROJECT
|
This is the artist statement that accompanied a 2014 exhibit of forty-eight couch photographs:
“Since 2011, I have been photographing couches that are on the side of the road or otherwise 'dead'. This is a work-in-progress. None of the photographs are staged; they are meant to look artless. Despite this intention, many of the pictures possess an aesthetic element driven by their accidental nature, their surroundings, their sheer quirkiness, or a combination thereof. As I’ve continued to work on this project, I have become fascinated by the way in which nearly every couch is placed parallel to the road, facing out — allowing passersby a prime view of the couch, and allowing its nonexistent sitter prime view of us. I am also amazed by the way in which an abandoned sofa can have so much appeal, and at times be strikingly beautiful; often it is the photograph itself that draws out these qualities. It is my belief that the couch on the side of the road convention, as an American phenomenon, reflects broader aspects of our living room culture”. Although I rarely stop to take a picture of a couch anymore, in my mind's eye I still do. |
|
|
MILAN/ITHACA
I’ve often thought of self-publishing these pairs of photographs and calling it, Milan/Ithaca: A Tale of Two Cities. Here’s the preface for the would-be book: "The aesthetic experience of the urbanscape. Every city has one. It is not determined by a single element but rather through a composite of many. Ithaca, New York is no exception. Through generations of creative hands and minds, the “10 square miles” at the base of Cayuga Lake pulsate with visual life. In this series, photographs I have taken in Ithaca during the last few years have been selectively twinned with photos taken in Milan on a trip to Italy with my daughter in 2014. Why choose Milan as counterpoint? It might strike some as an almost unjust comparison. But that’s precisely the point. Juxtaposing the city of Milan — icon of high fashion and elegance — illuminates Ithaca’s ability to withstand any beauty test. Indeed, whatever the image culled from my Milanese album, I discovered over and over that Ithaca’s unique imprimatur could unapolgetically respond in kind. I invite you to look at the special, varied, and vibrant character that defines our fair city.” |
"Out of chaos comes order — not by accident, but by nature”. |
MEN READING
|
Is there anything sexier than a man reading? I don’t think so.
Viewing life through an extraordinary lens somehow puts the human condition into sharper focus. It allows us to reconsider are own lives with greater understanding." |
|