Photojournalist to Photo Artist
I started working as a photographer and journalist to pay my way through college, where I obtained a degree in Art at Hobart College in Geneva, New York. Once out of college I spent a brief time as curator of photography and film at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York where Yoko Ono had her first one woman show. I was one of the pioneering members of the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City. As a photojournalist I covered everything from riots during the Sixties to the first landing of the Space Shuttle at Edwards Air Force Base in California for National Geographic Magazine. My experience as a newsman has been rounded out since then as an editor and publisher.
In working as a photojournalist, I was chasing hardcore news stories for papers, wire services and magazines. But that is the nature of news, and the assignment is to catch the daily drama of human life.
I interviewed and photographed Ansel Adams in the late Seventies. The article was done with a news slant; it was about Adams as an environmentalist. It was not until years later when I happened across the book of his letters that I understood Adams, the artist.
The artist has an incredible freedom to choose what they want to express about life. No one assigned Monet to paint water lilies and haystacks, or Van Gogh a "Starry Night" or Adams to photograph a moonrise or Weston a nautilus shell.
On August 26, 1970 Adams wrote a letter to art historian, Nancy Newhall, about the definition of art and the role of photography as art. "Granted that we have some obligation to point out and eliminate the bad aspects of existence; we can achieve more by passing on the aspects of beauty and the human potential," said Adams.
You can call it self assignment, listening to the Muse or following the artistic expression within. I defined it thus: the highest expression of art is the sharing of the beauty that surrounds us. When you can see beauty around you, you see it in yourself and you can bring joy to the world with that expression.
Today, we live a frenetic life style and we are always talking about slowing down to smell the roses, but we seldom do. Moments of beauty, while they are all around us, are often fleeting. To not let them get away, I use all the skills I developed as a photojournalist.
I really look, until I catch just the right light on a leaf, or the subtle color of a rose on a summer morning, and hold it. Hold it in the lens of my camera, capture it in digital memory and then process the image until it leaps off the canvas and touches your heart.
What I am after is to give you an instant to stop and remember that there is beauty in your world. A moment for you look up from the mess of paper on your desk, the thousands of e-mail messages in your Inbox, to look up on the wall and let the radiant color of a rose penetrate through the haze until you can smell the delicate scent of the rose "Fragrant Cloud" in front of you.
Click here to look at the images of my rose garden. If you like them, please, let me know.