My photography career began in 1970 when I borrowed a camera to take with me to a job at a salmon cannery in Egekik, Alaska. Encouraged by my results I took a photography course from UC extension where I learned the basics of exposure and darkroom development. My first show (Split Images) was at the UC extension art gallery and was inspired by a suggestion from the instructor to explore the creation of images that arose from overlapping exposures, hence the name split images.
My 2nd show was portrait themed and grew out of my association with a number of photographers who worked out of the UC Berkeley darkrooms and its small exhibition space. My third show was also a group exhibition in Berkeley: “River Nudes”. In 1976 I presented at a group show: “New and Different: Young Photographers Making Their Mark” at The Photographers Place in Los Angeles. In 1979 I had my first solo exhibition: “Near and Far” at Cafe Roma in Berkeley.
My photographic career took a turn when I lived in Chicago from 1984 to 1989. Instead of being a hobby and focusing on Art, I started taking jobs as a commercial photographer. I shot fashion, event, travel, journalism, portrait, advertising brochures, mailers, etc. etc.
In 1993 after moving to Rochester and taking an advanced darkroom workshop led by John Sexton, I presented “Watersong” at the Oxford Gallery, a series of images taken in the gorges of the Finger Lakes.
In 2016 I exhibited my work at the exhibition space of the Canandaigua National Bank. “Lost in Landscape” featured work from the Finger Lakes, California (seascapes) and recent work from southern Utah (Valley of the Gods).
I would say my major influences are Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, and way too many painters from Bierstadt to Turner to Monet to Hiroshige to abstract artists such as Pollock and Rothko.
Currently my work is showing at the New Britain Museum of American Art, Vestige Gallery in Pittsburgh, fotofoto gallery in Huntington, NY, and selected work from “Lost in the Woods” at the Canandaigua Bank Gallery in Rochester, NY.
