About the Artist
In the summer in 1968, my father brought home a Nikon 35mm camera, and I doubt he knew the journey he had set me on in that instant. I spent the next three months image-hunting all over Palo Alto, and then ventured further North in the Bay Area, making frequent day trips to the Pacific Ocean, and up the peninsula to Golden Gate State Park. I was burning through roll after roll of Tri-X film. My first darkroom was crammed into a tiny upstairs bathroom. I learned to print on a rickety Omega enlarger. The bathtub substituted as a darkroom sink. The enlarger rested on the lid of the toilet, and bath towels served to block the light from streaming through the window and from under the door. Developing photographs was not only hypnotic, but also proved to be transformative for me as a young man. In the fall when I returned to school in Sandy Spring, Maryland, I held my first solo exhibition.
Fast forward to 1981 – The Art Institute of Chicago had just opened its new photography facility and gallery. I attended one of the first exhibitions––a survey of important 20th Century photographers, which included work by Josef Sudek, Edward Weston, and others. That collection of incredibly sharp images was more luminous than anything I had ever seen. I finally found my high watermark and it lit in me a desire to pursue fine art photography. The experience was like that of a child peering through a magnifying glass for the first time—the cavernous epiphany in that moment of discovery—I needed to create images like those.
I put the 35mm Nikon F on the shelf, and began working with the view camera. The first one I used was a late 1940s' 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 Kodak Crown Graphic Press camera that had been my father’s when he was conducting medical research during, and just after World War II. I attended numerous workshops and studied with many prominent West Coast photographers including Al Weber, Huntington Witherill, and Per Volquartz, among many others. Now retired, I am using this time to pursue my lifelong passion for traditional fine art black and white photography–striving to prefect this method to tell vivid stories in my still life photographs.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, BFA in painting and drawing, 1973, MFA
photography and filmmaking, 1975
Teacher, Young Artists Studio, Art Institute of Chicago
Adjunct Professor: Governor’s State University, among others
Art & Photography Teacher: Chicago Suburbs 1973—2007
Award Recipient, The Kohl Foundation International Award for Exemplary Teaching, 1986
Author, “A Tribute Per Volquartz 1947-2011” View Camera Magazine, July/August 2011
Member, "Water Street Studio Collective 2019-2020"
Gallery Repersentation, "Water Street Studio Art Gallery"