Growing up in the 1940s and ’50s, little did I realize how photography—the taking of pictures—would change and, at the same time, enhance my life in the decades that followed. When I took my first photograph with an Eastman Kodak Brownie box camera, no one could have imagined the taking of my most recent photo with my digital cell phone. Kodak’s motto back then was, “You press the button, we do the rest.” And so it was: the black-and-white exposed negatives were mailed out to be processed, and the glossy prints that returned were—you guessed it—uncropped, poorly composed and slightly out-of-focus family pictures, not good portraits.
Several decades later, fortune or perhaps fate, would find me sitting next to an Associated Press sports photographer in law school. He took the time to teach me the basics of film development and printing.
Then in the 1980s fate struck again. My spouse gave me a Deardorff 8-by-10-inch large-format camera. Learning, as Kodak put it, “to do the rest” had a very steep learning curve. Nevertheless, my time in the studio and darkroom turned out to be a glorious window for delicious artistic license. It wasn’t long before collecting fine art photographic images became a hobby and reading about its skill sets, its history and its artists a fascination.
Fortune would strike again when Wilson, my son, invited me to work for him in his gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. VERVE Gallery specialized in contemporary fine art photography. The gallery’s artists were alive, hard-working, creative fine art photographers. Each was a very real person with a passion for the art. Without exception, they were also lovely, intelligent, thoughtful and caring people. The 15 years with my son and in the company of VERVE’s artists are my most memorable.
My images on this website are my tribute and special thanks to Wilson and VERVE’s artists.
These images, my own work, can best be described as Bellas Vistas “picturesque”—that is to say, my prints are calming and pleasing to the eye so as to give one a sense of relief from the alienation and isolation of modern urban life. With few exceptions, the images in this collection are not meant to confront or trouble the viewer, but rather they are meant to uplift, amuse and relax the spirit. These tranquil images are best described metaphorically as being similar to jazz ballad improvisation in that the scenes, persons and objects photographed are the underlying melodies and the finished prints are the improvisations.
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