I have long thought of photography as an egalitarian art. With such forms of artistic expression as drawing, painting and sculpture, one must be gifted with the physical dexterity of hand to excel. Of course, in addition to that, one needs to have the artistic vision to match.
With photography, it’s all about vision. The camera, giving us what Henri Cartier-Bresson called “instant drawing,” makes us all equally dexterous of hand. Even people who can’t draw a straight line have a chance. That’s a powerful tool, and how we use it is up to each individual to decide.
If I were to divide photographers into two types, I might choose those who depict the world as it is and those who depict the world as they would like it to be. I definitely fall into the latter category. The world is (and, I suspect, has always been) a place where one feels helpless to change things. With a camera, I feel empowered – not to change the world, but to create my own world in the images that I create.
In a world that often seems chaotic, I try to give my images a sense of beauty, of elegance and of grace – hence the name for my website, Figures of Grace. While this may apply literally to my work with the nude figure, my aim is to instill a sense of grace and elegance into all of my images.
There are many photographers working today who try to change the world by showing others how it really is. Many risk their lives to do so, and I salute them all. They are certainly needed. My goal, however, is to show that there also exists a world of beauty, something to show that life is worth living – and I think that’s a thing we all need, too.
TRAVEL
The first “serious” photography I undertook was in that circumstance where everybody else takes photos – on vacation. Beginning with my first solo trip in 1980 – a trip to England, Greece, Israel and Egypt – my motto became “Have Camera, Will Travel.” Seeing the world just didn’t seem complete without a lens to look through, or, more importantly, the opportunity to record that world as my vision saw it.
I still get a thrill each time I set out for a new destination or try to find something new during a re-visit. Some things have changed over the years. In my early days, I used a 35mm camera with color slide film. After that, I moved up to medium format cameras, using mostly black & white film. In 2022, for several reasons, I switched to using a digital camera system.
The change from photographing in color to doing so in black & white was an important one, as I find the type of vision needed for black & white to be quite different than that for color. Part of the reason for switching to black & white was a love for the monochromatic image – its use of tones, textures and shapes – and the fact that I was able to make the final print myself when I made prints in a darkroom.
NUDES
When I began working with the nude figure, I had no realization that it would become a long term theme. I’d attended a weekend workshop in upstate New York in 1995, and it might have ended there had another photographer not invited me to participate in some private photo sessions with models during the ensuing months. Through these events and with the encouragement of others, I found that I enjoyed photographing the nude. It is, admittedly, a pleasing subject – but I also found that I had some talent in doing so. As a Classics major in college I had studied classical art, and I began to also view the nude as ‘living sculpture.’
It was also something very different from what I had been doing. While my travel and nude photos are similar in that they share a common vision, the two are very different in one manner: my travel photography is reactive, while my nude work is proactive. In my travels, I search for scenes that interest me visually, which I then try to frame in a strong and interesting manner. I have no power to change the basic elements in that scene. For a nude photo to be successful, it is equally important to find and frame a visually interesting background, but I also have the ability to alter a key element by placing the model where I choose.
My work with the nude figure also receives the credit for turning me into a primarily black & white photographer. I decided from the start to photograph this in black & white as the masters of the genre had primarily done. This led to me doing my own developing and printing and coming up with my own vision for black & white. Now when someone asks me why I don’t photograph in color, I simply answer, “Why should I?”
EQUIPMENT AND PROCESS
For many years, from 1995 to 2022, my primary tool for creating images was a Pentax 67 medium format film camera – supplemented occasionally by a Fuji 6×7 rangefinder camera, a Rolleicord, a Holga and my old Minolta 35mm camera with infrared film. The Pentax camera with its lenses and a backup camera (first the Fuji, then another Pentax 67 body) were a lot to carry around with me, but I did it for the image quality that medium format film provides, and seeing the images that I developed and printed myself made it worthwhile.
In 2022, however, I made the difficult decision to switch from my Pentax to a Fujifilm digital camera system. I did this for two basic reasons. First, I have run out of space at home for keeping more negatives (as medium format film takes up a lot of space). The other reason is that x-ray machines at airports and some other places around the world are just becoming more and more difficult to deal with, and I don’t want to risk losing an entire trip’s worth of images (as I had feared might happen on one trip) due to such machines.
Therefore, I am now using a Fuji X-H2 and a Fuji X-H2S as my primary image-making tools. For editing, I try to keep it simple, with Adobe Photoshop Elements as my primary program.