This time, there have been a lot of interesting discussion about the subject matter and I've had a good time talking about it. And in some of the cases, I'm not just signing books; I'm showing slides and talking about the work.
I became enamored with photography when I was about 13 or 14 years old. I've been at it ever since. I studied seriously in the '70s.
I'm not an equipment nut. I tend to use whatever's to hand. I have several cameras, of course, but I'm not emotional about any of them.
What I'm exploring right now is the subject of my own mortality. It's an area that I'm curious about, and I'm researching it to see if there's a photographic essay in it for me. If images don't start to come, I'll go to something else.
My dream concept is that I have a camera and I am trying to photograph what is essentially invisible. And every once in a while I get a glimpse of her and I grab that picture.
I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.
I began working with a family camera. It was called a Kodak Autographic, which was one of those things where you flopped it open and pulled out the bellows. And I've been at it ever since; I've never stopped.
I certainly don't live in a kosher home although I was raised in a kosher environment.
Most of my images have been done in-studio, under very controlled lighting conditions. There have been a few that have been shot in nature, but even then they were shot almost exclusively at night, and again, under controlled lighting conditions.
That's true, because I'm a photographer now.
I did not move into developing or processing color. I stayed with black and white. I still think to this day that I prefer to work in black and white if it has to do with poetry or anything other than specific reality. I have worked in color when I thought it was the appropriate way to express the thought that I was working on.
I am not Spock.
You know, for a long time I have been of the opinion that artists don't necessarily know what they're doing. You don't necessarily know what kind of universal concept you're tapping into.
My memory of those places is better than my pictures. That's why I get much more satisfaction out of shooting thematic work that has to do with an idea that I'm searching for, or searching to express.
I became involved in photography when I was about thirteen years old.
For me it's all about personal vision; is there something about a subject that uniquely speaks to me.
