Born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York, I received early exposure to art and artists through my father who had a studio in Manhattan, and was a photo-realist painter and illustrator of book covers and movie posters. It was my dad who encouraged me to develop an interest for photography and pursue an education in the field of image making.
I started making photographs in 1966 as editor of my high school yearbook, using a Rolliflex 120mm twin lens reflex camera. I built a darkroom in the basement of my parents house, and developed a great love for the wondrous process of print making and film developing. My earliest images were photographs made on the streets of NYC, and consisted mainly of architectural details and candid shots of people.
After graduating high school I studied fashion photography at the Fashion Institute Of Technology in NYC. As a student of commercial photography at the Art Center College Of Design in Los Angeles, I was introduced to, and learned to master the use of large format view cameras.
My current images are made with an 8X10 wood field
camera, using old Goerz Dagor and Artar lenses. I make silver chloride
contact prints from my negatives. I also produce Platinum/Palladium
prints of select images in limited editions. I do not make photographic
images to be enlarged, but see them as contact prints from the beginning.
I am very much influenced by the images and photographic styles of such
artists as Edward Weston, Wynn Bullock, Paul Strand, Brett Weston, Minor
White and Paul Caponigro. I choose to point my lens at the undisturbed
beauty often found in uninhabited, light-struct spaces and take a meditative
and contemplative approach towards image making.