About me...
I call myself a street photographer. But just what is that? It is easier to say what that isn’t than it is to define it. Street photography is not images of streets, those can be called architectural or cityscapes at times, evidence, perhaps, at others. Photojournalism often provides great street photography. All these and more are valid versions. But to me street photography is simply the attempt to capture images of everyday life, of people and things that make up life. Did I say simply?
It’s not that I haven’t taken a landscape, a still life or a formal portrait, I have, but my interest has always been the life and action of the street. Perhaps that’s because I am from a city and grew up amid all the hustle and confusion of a city’s daily life. I continue to find New York to be one of the most photogenic cities. My vision tends to focus on people and the places where they live and work and play. It describes joy as well as hardship and the mundane, sometimes, of everyday life. It tries to present both the complexity and simplicity of life. Walker Evans is said to have photographed the vernacular of American life.
We all look at the same world, yet we all see it differently. A subtle shadow or shade of color is visible to one person, but not another. Our vision is unique to each of us. We are easily distracted. The photograph has the ability to capture a moment of time, but what was seen by the photographer is not always what will be seen by others. Others regularly point out things in my work that I didn’t see when I took the picture or looked at it later. But the photograph freezes that moment for endless contemplation.
I use the photograph to express my view of our shared human experience, perhaps to open others to some discovery of mine. I’ve always loved the black and white image but use color as well. I hope that you can share the world that I see and try to capture with images.
My images of people are both posed and informal – the subject sometimes aware of the photograph, sometimes not. I try to use my cityscapes to present scenes that are overlooked by most of us as we live our day-to-day lives. While color presents the world as it is – in beauty and reality – I like to use black and white to strip away the extra information of color and reduce a person and a scene to their essential elements.
My artistic influences are many. Among photographers, Edward Steichen, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander and Arnold Newman have all made an impact. Because I don’t separate commercial art from so-called fine art I have always loved the fashion work of Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. I love writers whose work is very much like good street photography, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Pete Hamill and sometimes Jimmy Breslin – all journalists at one time or another and all observers of life on the street. I love Elmore Leonard whose quirky vision of life is almost abstraction. I admit to having my mind occasionally stuck in the black and white, noir of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. A simpler world perhaps, perhaps not.
Stephen King in “On Writing.” Offers this directive, “read a lot, write a lot.” Photography is like that. See a lot of images, photograph a lot of images. That doesn’t mean using a digital camera
to take a thousand pictures just because you can. It simply means getting out in the world a seeing. I always tell myself that I can’t take a picture if I don’t have a camera and the camera is no good in a bag with its lens cap on.
I hope that you enjoy my work. I welcome your comments.
It’s not that I haven’t taken a landscape, a still life or a formal portrait, I have, but my interest has always been the life and action of the street. Perhaps that’s because I am from a city and grew up amid all the hustle and confusion of a city’s daily life. I continue to find New York to be one of the most photogenic cities. My vision tends to focus on people and the places where they live and work and play. It describes joy as well as hardship and the mundane, sometimes, of everyday life. It tries to present both the complexity and simplicity of life. Walker Evans is said to have photographed the vernacular of American life.
We all look at the same world, yet we all see it differently. A subtle shadow or shade of color is visible to one person, but not another. Our vision is unique to each of us. We are easily distracted. The photograph has the ability to capture a moment of time, but what was seen by the photographer is not always what will be seen by others. Others regularly point out things in my work that I didn’t see when I took the picture or looked at it later. But the photograph freezes that moment for endless contemplation.
I use the photograph to express my view of our shared human experience, perhaps to open others to some discovery of mine. I’ve always loved the black and white image but use color as well. I hope that you can share the world that I see and try to capture with images.
My images of people are both posed and informal – the subject sometimes aware of the photograph, sometimes not. I try to use my cityscapes to present scenes that are overlooked by most of us as we live our day-to-day lives. While color presents the world as it is – in beauty and reality – I like to use black and white to strip away the extra information of color and reduce a person and a scene to their essential elements.
My artistic influences are many. Among photographers, Edward Steichen, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander and Arnold Newman have all made an impact. Because I don’t separate commercial art from so-called fine art I have always loved the fashion work of Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. I love writers whose work is very much like good street photography, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Pete Hamill and sometimes Jimmy Breslin – all journalists at one time or another and all observers of life on the street. I love Elmore Leonard whose quirky vision of life is almost abstraction. I admit to having my mind occasionally stuck in the black and white, noir of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. A simpler world perhaps, perhaps not.
Stephen King in “On Writing.” Offers this directive, “read a lot, write a lot.” Photography is like that. See a lot of images, photograph a lot of images. That doesn’t mean using a digital camera
to take a thousand pictures just because you can. It simply means getting out in the world a seeing. I always tell myself that I can’t take a picture if I don’t have a camera and the camera is no good in a bag with its lens cap on.
I hope that you enjoy my work. I welcome your comments.