A selection of six photographs
Biographical Notes
A selection of six photographs
Through the 'fifties' and early 'sixties' I studied art and design in Boston and New York and photography with Alexei Brodevich, Richard Avedon and Bruce Davidson. Photography had not yet become what it is today. There were few places where, as students, we could go to see good photographs. Only at the photographic Library of The Museum of Modern Art could I study the prints and images of Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Margaret Bourke-White and August Sander.My first photographs were taken on the streets of New York going from one depressing neighbourhood to another, passing Diane Arbus and Gary Winograd collecting images of poverty, urban low-life and ethnic minorities.
I exhibited my pictures at the Smithsonian Institute for the President's War on Poverty. I then went into a career in commercial photography - fashion, advertising, editorial and rock 'n roll.
After about ten years I left that behind me. Neither the spying on poor people for middle-class audiences nor serving the media world gave me the kind of images I wanted to leave my children. My camera became more than just a way of making a living. Making a living seemed less important than living itself.
I believe that applying the same technical expertise and the same 'eye' to photographing people who are happy, results in the kind of images that show, that in spite of all our difficulties, the world is also a happy place.
No matter where I have taken my pictures since then, on High Streets of London or in the hills of Laos, a smile is always a smile.
PERMANENT COLLECTIONS:
Musee de L'Elysee, Lausanne
The Kobal Collection
The Wagstaff Collection
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
PORTFOLIOS:
British Journal of Photography
Zoom Magazine
BJP Annual
Creative Camera
